Picture palace - Paul Theroux

"Never a dull moment . . . Vivid and deft." - New York Review of Books

Maude
Pratt is a legend, a photographer famous for her cutting-edge
techniques and uncanny ability to strip away the masks of the world's
most recognizable celebrities and luminaries. Now in her seventies,
Maude has been in the public eye since the 1920s, and her unparalleled
portfolio includes intimate portraits of Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, and
Picasso. While Maude possesses a singular capability to expose the inner
lives of her subjects, she is obsessive about protecting her own,
hiding her deepest secret in the "picture palace" of her memory. But
when a young archivist comes to stay in Maude's Cape Cod home and begins
sorting through her fifty years of work, Maude is forced to face her
past and come to terms, at last, with the tragedies she's buried.

"A breathtaking tale . . . Intangibly, intricately brilliant." - Telegraph (UK)