An Odd Book – a.k.a. Unique
Please note that I am now an Affiliate Marketer on Amazon. This means my book reviews will include a link to the book on Amazon. If you purchase the book using my link, I will earn a small commission. This is at no additional cost to you. More details here. Thank you for supporting my Book Blog in this manner.
*****
This was a five-star book for me. I really loved it and found it to be laugh-out-loud funny at times – and there are not many books that strike me that way. And yet, I’m not sure to whom I’d recommend it. It is an odd book – a.k.a. unique. It is written almost entirely through museum wall labels that chronicle the life of Kitty Whitaker from 1906 through 1999. Treating Kitty as a work of art, the wall labels tell us about her through the years, discussing her style, history, provenance, and physical condition.
If that sounds intriguing, give this book a try. I promise that not just any writer could pull off a book of this type, but Christine Coulson is uniquely suited to the task.
Writers are told to write what they know and Coulson worked as a writer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for more than 25 years. When she left in 2019, she was the Senior Writer. Putting her first-hand experience to good use, she has now published two books. Her first book, Metropolitan Stories: A Novel, came out in 2019. It is followed now by One Woman Show.
In a conversation with the author at the end of the book, she tells us that a museum wall label has a very specific form. “You only get seventy-five words to describe [the piece], so visitors are always getting only part of the story…Labels are also notoriously boring, so I wondered, what if a label was funny? What if one was emotional or sexy? How far could I push the form and its detached institutional voice?”
Trust me, she conveys a lot of information within the allotted words plus she astutely helps the reader to read between the lines. And as I have already said, her wall labels are often very funny in a sly sort of way.
There were two things I found intriguing about the book. First, the author can point out whole socioeconomic groups through the use of names and nicknames alone. Thus we have Caroline Margaret Brooks Whitaker (known as Kitty) from the collection of Martha and Harrison Whitaker (known as Minty and Whit). And we have Ellen Barton from the collection of Elizabeth and Joseph Barton (known as Beth and Joe). I’m thinking Beth and Joe are not affluent, while Minty and Whit are. (And later, I’m thinking the same thing about Bunty, Biff, Topper, Sully, Duckie, and Link – to name just a few…)
Labeling people as “from the collection of” their parents is the second thing that intrigued me. In art, the concept of provenance is the record of who has owned the work through its history. It’s used as a guide to authenticity and quality. By book’s end, Kitty has been widowed twice and divorced once, giving her a very long provenance. She is Caroline Margaret Brooks Whitaker Wallingford de Braganza Deen (known as Kitty). Ex-collection of Martha and Harrison Whitaker; William Wallingford III; Luiz Carlos Alfonso Antonio de Braganza; George Robert Hoppington Deen. If we think about it, Kitty’s “ownership” through her lifetime tells us a lot about a woman’s place in the world in that time period.
And so as I read this book, I laughed a lot and reflected a lot and came away with an appreciation for being a woman of my generation as opposed to Kitty’s.
It’s an odd book. A unique book. A five-star book.
*****
Learn more about One Woman Show here on Amazon.
*****
I’m glad you found this book review and I hope you loved it. If so, check out my book blog – there are more than 150 reviews for you to explore, with more to come. I publish about three dozen reviews a year.
Leave a Reply