Pictures of You: A Novel by Caroline Leavitt (Algonquin Books, $13.94, 336 pages)
There was no cause and effect. There was no karma. The truth was that he wasn’t so sure he understood how the world worked anymore.
At the start of Pictures of You, two women – April and Isabelle – are literally driving away from their marriages when they collide on a foggy highway. Only Isabelle survives. And she’s joined in the role of survivor by her husband Charlie, April’s husband Sam and his needy 9-year-old son, Sam. In his neediness, Sam comes to view Isabelle as an angel placed on earth to rescue him.
It’s quite an amazing set-up for an extremely well written novel by Caroline Leavitt. Leavitt writes in a calm, methodical, factual style that calls to mind both Michelle Richmond and Diane Hammond; and like those authors (and Elizabeth Berg), she intends to impart a few of life’s lessons in the process of telling a story. One lesson has to do with powerlessness: “You could think you understood things, but the truth was that you could never see the full picture of someone else’s life.”
Then there’s the fact that we look for something more than human in times of grief and trouble: “Maybe tomorrow, the angel might be the one to come for him.” “People believed in angels when they were most in trouble.”
…he had somehow photographed her so that her shoulders were dark and burly, as if she had wings under her dress… (as if) she might spread them to lift off the ground and fly away.
Sam’s desire to make something sacred out of the very human Isabelle is a representation of the notion that everyone seeks comfort and safety in life. When Sam’s father reads the obituaries in the newspaper, “He (doesn’t) bother to brush away his tears… each one said the same thing: Come home. Come home.”
Isabelle, however, is the one who has the clear chance to re-start her life, and the reader will be intrigued to see what choices she makes. The beauty of Leavitt’s telling is that what the reader thinks is going to happen does not. And this, in itself, makes it a very special book.
Pictures of You concludes with a perfect ending in which everything is fully and satisfactorily resolved. There’s also a Hollywood-style postscript, a look back from 21 years later, that adds a nice cinematic touch to the account. All in all, this is an amazing second novel.
Highly recommended.
Joseph Arellano
A review copy was provided by the publisher. “Magically written, heartbreakingly honest.” Jodi Picoult
The reader who enjoys this book may also want to read American Music: A Novel by Jane Mendelsohn. 
You can find our review of American Music here: https://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/late-for-the-sky/
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