“While the Coop­er-Hewitt col­lec­tion clear­ly inspired the author, the book con­tains much more than that par­tic­u­lar selec­tion of things. It opens with moments from Kalman’s per­son­al his­to­ry— a wed­ding pho­to­graph of her moth­er and aunt; a draw­ing of a room where her aunt used to give her ​“advice about life”; a pho­to­graph of Joseph Beuys’s suit. ​“Every­thing is part of every­thing,” Kalman writes at the con­clu­sion of the book, hav­ing tied these per­son­al mem­o­ries to a muse­um col­lec­tion to her per­son­al col­lec­tions to mem­o­ries of events that occurred long before she was born. The book is suf­fused with sad­ness — ​“you can rely on sad­ness,” she explains— and these bath­tubs and but­tons and lists and doors and box­es recall moments that we, as read­ers, some­how become nos­tal­gic for, along­side our nar­ra­tor. ​“Objects inhab­it the mem­o­ries,” the author wise­ly tells us, and it is true, even if they were not ini­tial­ly our objects or mem­o­ries; mag­i­cal­ly, they haunt us. The won­der is that they have been care­ful­ly con­sid­ered, stud­ied, drawn, and looked at. The won­der is that they were saved and col­lect­ed at all.” - Jewish Book Council