BOOK REVIEW: A Grand Complication by Stacy Perman

'Long ago Ward had become infected with what is known in some circles as the horological virus. An obsessive fever that brought kings to their knees and lovers to ruin and turned mighty industrialists to putty, it began simply with ownership of one watch and led without reservation to the desire to own every variation and then to own something that nobody has ever held.'

I was given this book for Christmas I believe, or possibly Valentines' Day... I forget, either way it took quite a time to find it's way to the front of the book queue and while it has been quite enjoyable I do think it could have been somewhat condensed. No one can accuse Stacy Perman of skimping on her subject and actually now that I realise that this book was written by a woman it makes a lot more sense... but anyone looking to pick this book up should be aware that there are huge swathes of this book where watches are barely mentioned.

Stacy Perman

A lot of the book concerns the backgrounds of Henry Graves and James Ward Packard and how they came to be in the position to afford to indulge their passion for watches, indeed the first one hundred pages can be skipped if you're only interested in watches because they detail Graves' family history and Packard's engineering brilliance and subsequent enormous wealth. 

I must admit I did find the story of Packard's background interesting, but I did find myself wondering 'when are we going to find out about the watches... ' and then when we do get to the watches, it almost feels like they come like a stream of bullets. The problem perhaps stems from the simple fact that these men were obsessive 'collectors' first and foremost, they always seemed to be after the next watch (and we all know how that feels, imagine if you have enormous wealth on top of that!) and so it feels like they are collecting these masterpieces from Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin like normal people collect Swatches from airports!

Once past the historical background, things do get a lot more horological, but I have to say I found this book a bit of a slog. It's a 300 page book that feels like a 600 page book to me, and I still have 50 pages to go. There are a small number of photographs inside, taking up maybe ten pages of the overall total, I can't help feeling that a lot more pictures of these incredible watches would have helped keep up the interest, and if they could have been in colour that would have been even better.

The tail end of the book discusses what happened to the watches after their original owners' deaths, a proportion ended up gifted to a museum, but some (incredibly) seemed to disappear without trace... which is a sobering thought for anyone with a big collection of anything. Finally around page 280 we get to the part which I'm sure a lot of people are most interested in, the sale by auction of the remaining watches.

If you are thinking about buying this book, I wouldn't dissuade you, but please don't expect a detailed catalogue of the watches of Graves and Packard. Yes there is detail, but there is an awful lot of background and if you are only interested in the watches and not the history (and family history) of the players then you might find this book frustrating and be tempted to start skipping pages.

As for me, I'm sticking it out to the end, but I very much doubt I will be reading it again.