Photograph
by Penelope Lively
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Book Summary Information
Author: Penelope LivelyEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Format: Audiobook, Unabridged
Published: 2003-06-23
ISBN: 1565117840
Number of pages: 480
Publisher: Highbridge Audio
Book Reviews of Photograph
Book Review: An Archaeology of Regret
Summary: 5 Stars
I enjoyed Lively's recent CONSEQUENCES so much that I turned to this slightly earlier novel. It is equally absorbing, but I think the greater achievement. While dealing with similar concerns -- families, the power of memory -- it is more concentrated, darker in tone but richer in its observation of human nature, and ultimately the more satisfying book. Had Lively not already won the Booker Prize with MOON TIGER, it would be easy to see this novel as a strong contender.
The premise is simple. Glyn Peters, a sixtyish British archaeologist, comes upon a group photograph that includes his late wife, Kath. Details in the photo, and a brief note that he finds with it, suggest that there are aspects of Kath's married life that he didn't know. So, researcher that he is, he makes some enquiries. Consequences ripple outwards from there, affecting a tight group of people who had been connected with Kath. These include: Elaine, her older sister, a successful garden designer; Elaine's husband, Nick, a former publisher, now full of plans that seldom come to fruition; Oliver, Nick's former business partner, now running a desk-top publishing business of his own; and Nick and Elaine's daughter Polly, who had been very close to Kath growing up and is now a web designer. All of them remember Kath as a force of nature, stunningly beautiful, a magnetic presence in any room. Although there is little present-day action in the novel, Kath is very much alive in the memories of those who were close to her. Her incandescence comes through from the very beginning, but as we move through the heart of the novel into its poignant conclusion, we begin to glimpse the real woman behind the brilliant glow, and each of the characters finds something different in the Kath whom they thought they knew.
Consider again the various professions: archaeologist, landscape architect, publisher, web designer. As always with Lively, it seems, these are typical concerns for people of this class at this time. But there is more; they are all about manipulating and arranging given data to make a certain pleasing sense. Glyn's speciality is the history of landscape, reconstructing a lost way of life from the line of a hedge or the shape of a field; he is used to the way new discoveries can change old perceptions, and he approaches the study of his late wife in the same way. As a garden designer, Elaine also works with the natural features of a landscape, but builds on them, forming them into a new pattern to fulfill an aesthetic concept; this turns out to have been an acute analogy to her relationship with her younger sister. The other characters, as publishers or designers, are concerned with putting out words or pictures that will attract the eye, make apparent sense, and sell to the public. Lively seems to suggest that we treat our memories in much this way; by trying to wrestle them into patterns, putting them between glossy covers as it were, we may distort the natural shapes that point to more subtle meanings.
There is one other significant character in that photograph, Kath's friend Mary Packard. Mary is a potter, a profession that also involves the shaping of raw material into pleasing forms, but in a more basic and instinctive way. The raw material is not landscape but the dirt of which it is made, and the pot grows like a living thing in the potter's hands. It is not surprising that Mary understands things about Kath that even her family has missed. It is her appearance at the end of the story and her ability to listen (for all the others are talkers) that provides the final clues that make us see Kath in a new and gentler light.
Writing this review, I had the feeling of some other author hovering over Penelope Lively's novel. I now realize who it is: the Virginia Woolf of TO THE LIGHTHOUSE. Of course THE PHOTOGRAPH is by no means as difficult a book to get through, and it breaks little new formal ground. But it is similarly constructed out of a series of interior monologues, unbidden thoughts, and chance reflections. It is written with the assumption that the inner world is every bit as important as the outer one, only richer and more revealing. And Lively shares Woolf's power of making the reader look at his or her own life in ways which will never be quite the same again. A magnificent achievement!
Summary of Photograph
Searching through a little-used cupboard at home, TV historian Glyn Peters chances upon a photograph he has never seen. Taken in high summer, many years before, it shows his wife, Kath, holding hands with another man. Glyn's mind fills with questions. Who was the man? Who took the photograph? Where was it taken? When? Worst of all: had Kath planned for him to find out all along? THE PHOTOGRAPH is a literary, psychologically complex novel of suspense that brings acclaimed author Penelope Lively's talents to a whole new level.General Books
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