*** THIS REVIEW IS FULL OF SPOILERS ***The Photograph was one of those books that initially it may appear to be somewhat dull and boring, but what a great read it turned out to be. Penelope does a great character study of Kath and the impact that those around her had on her life. In the process she gives us extensive background & in depth insight into the characters of each of these people. There’s Glyn, the husband; Elaine, the sister; Polly, the niece; Nick, the brother-in-law; Oliver, the photographer; Mary Packard, the elusive friend that we don’t know much about until near the end; and a sundry of peripheral people in Kath’s life. For much of the novel we are left to speculate as to how Kath dies, but if one reads closely, it is very apparent that she commits suicide (ten years into her marriage). Glyn finds a photograph years after her death of her discreetly holding hands with Nick, her brother-in-law. A note is with it from Nick making her aware of it & asking her to destroy it which she does not. Glyn is in a quandary over this turn of events & being the historical researcher he is, pursues for more information with an obsession. Did Nick & Kath have an affair? How long did it last? Were there others? As Glyn attempts to find answers he stirs up a real can of worms because he confronts all involved (those who knew or didn’t know anything about the photograph). Elaine kicks Nick out—he is so dependent on Elaine financially and otherwise that he moves in with his daughter, Polly, which totally disrupts her life. Elaine will not discuss the matter with Polly or Nick. The last person that Glyn finally finds to talk to toward the end of the novel after coming to many dead ends in his pursuit for more information, is Mary Packard, who seems to have been Kath’s one & only true friend. Glyn, Elaine & Oliver wind up having a lengthy conversation with Mary learning who the real Kath was. Each of them had been going about their lives & to Kath seemingly constantly inadvertently putting her real needs aside. Keep in mind Kath was a beautiful woman with few aspirations other than to be needed and loved, but no one seemed to realize this. Everyone knew she was beautiful, but didn’t try to see the person underneath the beauty. For me this novel emphasizes the importance of “listening” to our loved ones and our friends and expressing our love not just assuming, “oh they know.” Polly in describing one of her days seems to summarize in a nutshell how many of his go about our lives breezing through our work, exact, but not exactly enough & socializing usefully with our colleagues. This book prompts one to take a look around at the people we know, perhaps the people we’ve dismissed from our lives that we saw as beautiful, self-centered or callous. Do we really see people we know inside? Do we listen? Do we know each other’s “real needs?” If we have something “niggling” at the back of our brain, do we stop to ask ourselves, “are we listening,” what is our subconscious telling us to pay attention to? Can we change our impact on someone’s life? The novel takes us through what many might think superfluous information, but at the end one should see that this exploration into the character’s everyday lives & their interactions (or lack thereof) with Kath were necessary to see the whole picture & understand the purpose of the book. When thinking about what happened to Kath, Oliver says it so well, “He saw—dimly, inexplicably—that in some disturbing way what had happened was heralded, that there had always been something troubled about Kath, something that set her apart. Behind and beyond her looks, her manner, there had been some dark malaise. But nobody ever saw it, back then, he thought. All you saw was her face.”Oliver mentions the Latin phrase, “lacrimae rum,” in the last pages which he considered untranslatable. When I looked it up, there were a few translations, but the one that touched me was by Robert Fagles, “The world is a world of tears, and the burdens of mortality touch the heart.” Robert Fitzgerald translates it as "They weep here / For how the world goes, and our life that passes \ Touches their hearts."In the end, all those touched by Kath change in their thoughts & perceptions. Elaine welcomes Nick back home, Polly finds what she thinks might be true love & Glyn continues prodding along with his work and “finds that he has to find a new way of living with Kath, or rather a way of living with a new Kath. And of living without her, in a fresh, sharp deprivation.”
Penelope Lively is the most precise writer since Henry James. Where he carries the reader to the heart of his observation in a closing spiral of phrases set off by commas, Lively offers carefully-spun details, the particulars of work and relationships. And where James offers a Pointillist view of his subject, those dots of deliberately expressed color coalescing at a distance into an image, Lively weaves in tapestry fashion - these threads, these shadings - from which patterns emerge, become vivid; yet, a few more passes of the shuttle subtly change what we see. And when she is finished, Ah. We know she's done, every thread has been incorporated, nothing remains to say, the picture is complete.Lively's novel The Photograph begins straightforwardly enough: Glyn, a landscape historian rummaging through old papers in his closet, discovers an envelope he's never seen. The photo inside is of a group of people: his wife Kath, her sister, her sister's husband, a woman friend and her man friend. And his wife and her brother-in-law are holding hands in an intimate clasp, unseen except by the camera. Kath has been dead some years - how can this revelation make a difference now? And yet, as Glyn confronts those in the photo with its evidence, one person after another finds life shaken from its moorings. This sylph with her vital glow revisits them all, undoing their certainties, reasserting the mystery that surrounded her.Lively uses her found-object catalyst to examine people's relations to work, to family, to friendship, to the entire range of emotions from dissatisfaction and jealousy to the full storm of love.This slight novel, 231 pages, pulls no punches, employs no gimmicks, promises nothing it does not deliver. We are in the hands of a master. There is no bombast, only the struggles and escapes familiar to us all, directed and pointed to illuminate a life. If you appreciate clear simple language which lays bare the hidden heart in all its complexity, you should read this fine book.
What do You think about The Photograph (2004)?
Imagine the audacity of an author, writing a book containing not a single likable character. Who would have the nerve, the balls to do that?Penelope Lively, that's who, and her little venture has paid off handsomely in a well-crafted, absorbing book, full of scoundrels and harpies, that makes you pay attention to these people, even as your fingers throb with the desire to throttle them.Glyn discovers a photo of his late wife. She is clasping hands with another man. It is a picture of thinly disguised lust. The other man is her brother-in-law, Nick. Glyn's first thought (after "Son of a bitch!") is to share the misery. The swine runs straight to his dear, dead wife's sister, Elaine, to expose her husband for the lying, cheating bastard he is. This leads to a portentous chain of events and the introduction of even more loathsome characters.And yet, I had trouble putting the book down. I had to know what was going to happen next. How could all these awful people have such a hold on me? These people, so caught up in their own lives that they failed to notice the needs of others; they could not see the loneliness and boredom in the eyes of their supposed loved ones.And then, I realized...oh, crap! I'm guilty of these crimes. I barely glanced at my husband as he left for work this morning. And what shirt was my son wearing today? Did I even look?Perhaps I should start again...What author would dare to reveal us for the monsters we really are? Thoughtless, uncaring, oblivious...
—Melki
Kind of a mystery. The husband of the deseased finds picture of his wife and a group of family and friends. The wife is holding the hand of her brother-in-law in and intimate way (??)The photo is taken of the rear of the group (so secretiveintimate way) Solving the "crime" all the character defects of the family members and aquaintances hang out all over the place. All the while the lovely,lively and delightful deseased flits in and out of their memories for long episodes (sometime pages)The husband of the deseased is a professor of historicallandscapes and the sister a landscape architect...makes it somewhat interesting to me, Except the info. and descriptions sound very textbook. I think the book is silly, character were not likeable or even really believable to me. I read it because it is the next book on the Women in Literature book club. I am interested to see....did I miss something??
—Marie cuatt
The premise of the novel sounds like a prompt from an undergraduate fiction workshop: "Someone finds a photograph that changes everything." And as for the execution, this is not a book for people interested in plot or action. There isn't much as far as plot or forward momentum. A lot of what happens is in the form of revealed backstory.This is a novel about character, though. This is a novel in which a lot of flawed people make questionable choices, and about the power of one person to captivate everyone around her. When Glyn finds an envelope marked "Destroy--Do Not Read," he opens it to find a photo of his wife, Kath, who appears to be holding another man (her brother-in-law)'s hand. This sends Glyn on a dizzying spiral of obsession, trying to locate the truth behind the photo. Meanwhile, Elaine, Kath's sister, is pulled into the investigation, and slowly, pieces of the past come to light. I read this on audiobook, with different narrators reading different point of view chapters, which I think helped make the reading more pleasurable. Again, not a fast-moving novel, and not even one in which a lot happens, but a great study in the revelation of character.
—Adam
