The Hare with Amber Eyes

What I bought second-hand today: nothing. I found a beautiful man's shirt from the exclusive London shop Pink of Jermyn Street, priced at $7, but I did not buy it, to hang in my basement until I found a man just the right size to give it to. For the last 20 years, I did just that. And I would find him, too.

I spoke to my mother this morning, to check in but also to ask her questions about an important period in both our lives, when my father got polio in 1951 and almost died. I've heard the story many times, but even so, she remembered new details that were fascinating and added to my understanding. When I recounted this later, in my U of T class, several students said they were eager to interview their elderly relatives, to record their stories before it's too late, but felt too awkward to do so. It would look, said one, as if I'm saying, you're going to die soon, so talk.

Get those stories, I said. Tell your elderly relatives you have an assignment for writing class and want to ask them a few questions. I think you'll discover they're happy to talk and be listened to. Ask. Remember. Write it down. If you don't do it, no one will, and all your family stories will be lost.

Every time an old person dies, the saying goes, a library burns down.

Speaking of family stories, later I had to take "The Hare with Amber Eyes: a family's century of art and loss" back to the library before I'd finished it. A friend is reading it, so I hope to borrow it and start again. But from what I read, I have to say: this is the book I wanted to write, the book I wanted "Finding the Jewish Shakespeare" to be - an eloquent family history written in an intimate, honest voice; a richly felt personal tale spanning continents and generations.

I skimmed the end, and the author actually goes to Odessa, where his relatives lived in the 1880's. When I was writing my book, I wanted to go to Odessa; my great-grandfather also lived in Odessa in the 1880's, and my grandmother, his ninth child, was born there in 1889. While he's there, the author writes about realizing that it's time his research came to an end. "I was missing my wife and children," he writes, and for a brief moment, I felt blinding, furious jealousy of men. He has a wife back in London looking after the children, while he muses about history and genetics in Odessa. I was the single mother of two young children, with neither the money nor the freedom to go to Odessa and muse.

Nor, it's important to say, the self-confidence. Edmund de Waal has written a supremely self-confident, accomplished book. I sat at my desk for years - it took 25 years, from beginning to end, for my book to be published - feeling overwhelmed, alone, discouraged. I know that I should not regret that it's not a better book. I should be proud, given my life at the time, that there's a book at all, and one that readers have enjoyed and praised. I should be very proud.

And I am. But also, when I read a book as fine as "The Hare with Amber Eyes," I'm not.