By: Robert Bridges

In Seth Panitch’s novel Antique, an old necklace changes everything. What begins as a story about a fallen antiques appraiser trying to rebuild her life soon opens into a larger meditation on aging, emotional inheritance, and the hidden power of old things. The result is a novel that blends heart, mystery, and magical realism while asking a question that resonates far beyond the appraisal world: what are we really worth?

Panitch, whose career has spanned acting, directing, playwriting, screenwriting, and teaching, brings a layered understanding of human experience to the page. Best known for his work in theatre and film, the University of Alabama professor has built a career on storytelling across forms. Through this novel, he channels that experience into fiction, crafting a story centered on Grace Schaffer, a former star appraiser from an Antiques Roadshow-style television series whose life has come apart.

Grace has lost her marriage, her place in the art world, and her sense of self. Once admired for her authority and taste, she now finds herself starting over at a much smaller traveling appraisal show. There, she encounters an old necklace that seems to awaken something mysterious within her. Suddenly, when Grace overvalues objects based not on market logic but on their emotional significance, those items sell at auction for precisely the amount she predicted.

That magical premise allows Panitch to explore something deeper than fantasy. As he explains, “there is something beyond the everyday in age, in experience. The challenge, of course, is what we do with it. Even as our bodies deteriorate, as we tire, our hearts, our ability to love and to cherish, are at their best. I think there is great magic in forgotten things, in old things, in us as we age.”

That idea sits at the center of Antique. The novel is not merely about collectibles or the glamour of the auction world. It is about what society chooses to treasure and what it too easily overlooks. Panitch makes that tension explicit in the inscription that opens the book: “Antique: something old, rare of great value. Also used as a pejorative: out of fashion, washed up, dead.”

For Panitch, those competing definitions reveal a cultural fault line. “I find those two definitions are results of perspective. Do we as a society value age and experience and wisdom, or do we discard it for the new, flashy, hot-thing-of-the-moment?” he says. “When we do the latter, we cheapen our humanity, I think, we throw away this incredible currency of experience.”

That philosophy gives the novel its emotional gravity. Grace is not just tracking the price of objects; she is grappling with the way age, grief, and disappointment can make a person feel discarded. Her search for meaning becomes inseparable from her search for professional redemption, especially as she is drawn back into the art world and the pursuit of a long-lost masterpiece. Yet the real treasure in the story may be the recognition that human worth cannot be reduced to public success, desirability, or trendiness.

Panitch’s sensitivity to those themes comes in part from his own life. He recalls a formative high school job at a convalescent hospital, where he sat with patients and listened to their stories. “It gave me such a sense of scope, of continuation, of ROOTS,” he says, adding that he has “always tried to seek those stories out.” That reverence for lived experience is evident throughout the book, which treats memory not as a burden but as a form of enchantment.

Even Panitch’s description of everyday magic reflects the novel’s worldview. “You could say that holding someone’s hand is just the contact of skin on skin,” he says, “but I feel something buzzing between my skin and that of my lovely wife. The sound of a baby laughing, the first push on a swing set. Isn’t there something ineffable BETWEEN the points of contact that pleases and delights us? I call that magic.”

That belief in the invisible emotional charge of ordinary moments animates the story. The necklace may be the novel’s supernatural engine, but the real wonder comes from the way Panitch honors connection, between mothers and daughters, between past and present, between objects and the lives they have touched. In Grace’s world, appraising an heirloom is never just about provenance or market value. It is about legacy, longing, and love.

For readers who have embraced novels that mix warmth with mystery and a touch of the uncanny, Antique offers a rewarding journey. It has the emotional curiosity of contemporary book club fiction and the imaginative spark of magical realism, but its questions are timeless. What do we inherit? What do we overlook? How do we measure a life?

Panitch hopes readers come away with a renewed sense of their own hidden value. “I hope they can take away a little of my experience in writing the book,” he says, “that there are hidden parts of themselves that deserve to be uncovered, dusted off, and celebrated. That there is magic within us, if we dare to use it.”

In the novel, old things are never just old things. They are witnesses, vessels, and mirrors. And in Grace Schaffer’s search for what matters, Seth Panitch reminds us that age, far from diminishing value, may be where its truest form begins.

Antique is available through major booksellers, including Amazon.