Pictures of You

by Matt Thorne

Twenty-something Alison Hendry lives with her boyfriend Adrian and her sister Suzanne. While Adrian and Suzanne enjoy an extended adolescence, acting out famous events from recent rock history in their tiny living-room, Alison keeps the three of them alive by working at Force, a fashionable men's magazine. Alison loves everything about her job. She loves the stylish offices, the well-groomed men, and most of all, her boss, Martin Powell. It is a crush she hopes will remain unrequited, as she knows she'd go off him if she found out he returned her affections. Martin, meanwhile, has problems of his own. A decadent lifestyle and one too many infidelities have turned his marriage into a mockery, and he's taken to spending most evenings avoiding his impossibly posh wife, Claudia. But when Martin loses his job and takes on a ludicrous new commission, everything becomes subject to change....

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Blair · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having already read the extremely strange Cherry and the absolutely excellent Tourist, I was still curious about what other Matt Thorne books would be like. I picked Pictures of You because the plot, or at least the bare bones of it, appealed to me - it revolves around two characters: Martin, the dissatisfied editor of a men's magazine, married but unfaithful, whose life is a bit of a mess; and Alison, his assistant, who is similarly unhappy with her existence and has a crush on Martin. The events, unfolding over the course of a couple of weeks, cover what happens when Martin loses his job and the characters' lives, for separate reasons, start to go into a tailspin.

This is, in fact, a very slight sort of story. I was satisfied with how things worked out between Martin and Alison in the end, but it takes quite a while before their lives intersect in anything other than a professional manner. The rest of the book is made up of Martin's various infidelities and nights of debauched partying with a motley (and confusingly large - I kept forgetting who they all were) group of friends, and Alison's frustration with her lazy boyfriend Adrian and equally lazy sister Suzanne. There's a mystery, of sorts, but it's introduced too late and doesn't quite fit, and the conclusion is rushed - we don't find out who's been sending Alison the strange emails, which I thought was odd. The characters are okay, but hardly loveable; we see things mainly from Martin's viewpoint, and a man who doesn't do or think about much other than cheating on his wife isn't all that interesting to read about, or very sympathetic, despite the author's valiant attempts to make him into a nice guy. I did love that the Tenderloin Hotel, one of my favourite details from Cherry, was featured here too.

Altogether, I quite enjoyed the book - it's an easy read, which I started and finished in the space of one afternoon - but I'm left wondering what it was really supposed to be about. My rating is more of a 2.5 than a straight 2, but I find it hard to give it more than that when I wasn't engaged by either the characters or the plot; it definitely lacked the brilliance of Tourist, but didn't have the bizarre-but-compelling feel of Cherry either. I'm still interested in the author as his work seems to vary so much in style and theme, but I wouldn't really recommend this one. Get Tourist instead.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

In between a 3 and 4 for me and was going to round up, but the last stretch changed that.

[Gina · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've read a lot of tat, and I'm very forgiving of books that aren't perfect, but I really, really wasn't keen on this book. The plot sort of wanders around before suddenly going off on an unprecedented tangent at the end. I didn't like any of the characters, they kind of do nasty things without any motivation, so I'm not even invested enough to hate them. It just has a weird tone and I was left feeling like I didn't know what it was trying to say or achieve.

[Bookeraj · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit disgusting, story about modern urban people with no internal or social values. Martin Powell is an editor in a male magazine, deciding to start working in creating a mainstream pornography magazine. He is cheating his wife, taking drugs and living irresponsibly.