by Paul Theroux
First published 1999
Maude Coffin Pratt sits among decades of photographs in her studio, preparing for a major retrospective of her work. The seventy-year-old photographer has captured everyone from Gertrude Stein to Graham Greene, documenting both intimate moments and public spectacles throughout her career. As she sorts through contact sheets and prints, each image triggers memories she has long avoided. The faces staring back at her tell stories of beauty and corruption, of famous subjects caught in unguarded moments. But one photograph holds a secret that has shaped her entire life. The deeper Maude digs into her archive, the closer she comes to confronting the painful truth she has spent decades hiding behind her camera. Her lens has revealed the secrets of others, but now her own past demands acknowledgment. The retrospective becomes more than a career celebration as Maude must decide whether to finally expose the dark core of her existence.
Genres: fiction, art, literary-fiction, 20th-century, biography-memoir, photography
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
Period: 20th-Century
368 pages · Paperback · Penguin Books