A Question of Value: Stories from the Life of an Auctioneer

In an ideal world, every person would write a book like this near the end of their career, summing up their life's work with anecdotes, some funny, some wistful and even regretful, that capture the philosophy-in-action of a profession and a passion. But not everyone is as quietly stylish a writer as Brunk, who became an auctioneer in mid-life and built one of the most prominent auction houses in the South, nor has everyone had the good fortune to find a calling that matched his curiosity so well. His tales are about people as well as pieces, presented with some of the value-drama that makes Antiques Roadshow so watchable, but with a real tenderness for his clients and the history their objects represent. His book reminded me most of Thomas Lynch's lovely The Undertaking, both in his similar plain-spoken understanding of life and in the recurring presence of death in these stories of inheriting and letting go.