PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewLetters to Camondo will fascinate anyone who has projected complicated emotions onto objects ... evocative ... Although de Waal sketches the outline of the tragic story, readers looking for a more scholarly study of the Camondos may be better off turning to The House of Fragile Things, a new book by James McAuley on French Jewish collectors...De Waal offers something more personal: As an accomplished ceramic artist, he has created installations in a number of museums where he placed his own Japanese-inspired, minimalist vessels next to masterpieces of European painting, sparking fresh insights into familiar works. With its loose structure, which freely jumps between past and present, Letters to Camondo offers a literary counterpart to these striking exhibitions ... [De Waal] demonstrates, in this slim and elegant volume, how words can hold our memories as well as objects while taking up infinitely less space.
