Review: Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry by Leanne Shapton
I can’t remember where I saw this book, but I was intrigued by the format of it. It is essentially an auction catalogue, with items from a relationship. Through these items we get the story of a couple, how they met and how they broke up. This format of a story told through items interested me as it is new and different, at least to me. I must say the format led me down a little. This is literally an auction catalogue with pictures and descriptions of the items for sale. As a reader you have to piece together the story yourself from the bits and scraps of information you get from the rather short and austere catalogue descriptions. And that is a bit hard to do. Among the items for sale there are a few letters and notes giving you some insight to the tale of this relationship, and a few times the description will veer away from the neutral and give a statement such as “given to Morris by Doolan to bring on travels, but Morris insisted it was too heavy” (this is not a...