Thursday, August 18, 2016

The White Road

Author: Edmund de Waal
Stars: 1
Review by: Mandy Apgar


This is one of those books that make me want to apologize to future generations for sharing the planet with it. Good God did the author like the sound of his own voice - which is a huge (and very apparent) problem as the book is written in a stream of consciousness style. Oddly formatted paragraphs (with big print, always a giveaway that the author really has nothing to say) with a punctuation and formatting style that could give James Joyce a migraine, the original intent is good. A potter by trade, the author attempted to examine the origins of porcelain by visiting places key to its history - China, Dresden, and England mostly. If he had stuck to his idea it would've had a shot, but he just gets stuck on tangents and personal reflections waaaaaaaay too often. A person without a ceramic arts background could read this and understand the key concepts relative to the topic, but you really do need to have some prior interest in art history at least otherwise there is no way you'll make it through this. Speed reader or not, this was 48 minutes of my life I ain't ever getting back.

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