Blanket

There is nothing trivial about this little book. It addresses one ostensibly ordinary object – a blanket – but quickly turns your ideas on their heads. A blanket may be for comfort and warmth, but it may be used in other ways: to cover or even reveal in ways that can be more sinister than benign. For example, blankets have been used in warfare to spread disease, and blankets not only wrap us as we first enter the world but also in our last breaths as we leave it. Author Kara Thompson traverses a continent of meanings and implications, focusing on various artworks that use some type of blanket motif, or actual blankets, to illustrate metaphorical blankets, especially ones that deal with death. You will appreciate her brilliant analysis of these artworks and their synthesis with themes of colonialism, subjugation, memory, and survival, which is sensitive and detailed. Entwined through the story is a very personal and vulnerable story, in which Thompson wraps these blankets’ abstraction into her individual experience. The book will stay with you for a long time.