This New England

Antiques (humans, furniture and so on) are a big thing in New England's sense of itself. Here's a fun, no- holds-barred and eccentric look at the world they inhabit: Maryalice Huggins's Aesop's Mirror: A Love Story. (She is also the only person I have ever heard of with that first name!)

It might help to be a New Englander or New Yorker in reading it, but the book is of broad human interest, and indeed could be a hell of a funny movie, especially if they hire Huggins, with her droll, smoky voice, to narrate it.

A longtime denizen of the antiques and appraisal world, in New York and New England, Huggins, who plied her trade for years as a high-end furniture restorer, tells the sometimes bizarre tale of a large, ugly or beautiful (depending on your take) mirror and an Empire sofa as they wend their way through the sometimes hilarious, and often exasperating, business of antiques, auctions, appraisers, rich and unrich people, con men and even some plain and mystified honest folks.

It's a world where words don't always mean what you'd think they mean.

There are big names and big egos in this book, told by a writer who can be as lacerating about herself as she is about the other characters, including such celebrities as the Keno twins of Antiques Roadshow.

As the cliché goes, the book reads like a novel. It also is an offbeat and highly agreeable way to get some New England history lessons, from way back when to the ambiguous charms of the recently ended gilded age.

 Tags  Aesop's Mirror Keno twins Maryalice Huggins

Comments

jeff blanchard said:

what about maryalice williams, the pretty new york city newsreader?

Link | October 17, 2009 9:25 AM
Report Abuse

---

Leave a comment

Name:

Email:

URL:  

Remember personal info?

Captcha:

Type the characters you see in the picture above.