RaveSydney Morning Herald (AUS)The startling beauty of the novel...lies in the breezy way it moves in and out of its different textures – now sixth-century poetry, now the fractured one-word thoughts of a modern woman ... The whole narrative is a complex song of sorrow for the grandfather who abandoned the mother and hence the granddaughter, leaving them to search far and wide for the translation that will deliver love.
Edmund de Waal
RaveThe Weekend Australian... the text is structured so that the narrator, the reader, and the central character of Camondo are strangely all present, connected and somehow intimate. The letters are warm and whispering, as the letter-writer explores and exposes the life of Camondo to Camondo, while exposing that life to the wide-eyed reader via observations, explanations and questions. There is an eerie trust established between the three parties ... The text is delivered in a most particular level of present tense. It is confident, apparently polite, conversational, quietly conspiratorial, and yet inescapable ... Edmund de Waal is an archivist of a miraculously precise and poetic kind ... If ever a book inspires its readers to visit a museum, this is that book.
Daniel Mendelsohn
RaveSydney Review of Books (AUS)It has been good to read Three Rings in the time of lockdown, not only because it is a great joy in itself, but because of the variety and richness of its references ... Mendelsohn’s book has gathered into its net, in a way that is both smooth and sharp, many of the great books across time, and has given them a new significance in a fresh and dazzling context ... it is a performance of considerable magic ... Mendelsohn uses a great galaxy of words for his own circling technique. Some of these are: whirl, twist, weave, spin, spiral, twine, entangle, involute, digress, elaborate. It sounds like a mighty powerful dance. And so it is ... Reading Three Rings was for me one of the richest reading experiences I have had for a while.
Julian Barnes
RaveThe Newton Review of Books...[a] masterpiece by a guiding spirit of both fiction and non-fiction. Structurally, the book moves across character, place and time, with a delicious fluidity ... The tone is apparently conversational, playful even, but is in fact strictly controlled by the narrator/author who likes to insert asides, and ironic or even sarcastic comments. He is totally, maybe pathologically, alert – the reader also must remain vigilant lest a key detail slip by amid the rich flood of teasing ingredients. Here, every little thing, dear reader, counts ... I loved this book. I hope you do too.
