Customer Reviews

The Girl in the Photograph

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Girl in the Photograph was a lyrical look into the lives of warm, intriguing and very real characters. I was kept in suspense as the mystery of the photograph slowly unfolded; the impact it made on the main character was believeable and poignant. Donnelly weaves a keen mystery into the fabic of the story of a proud family, secretive, protective, at times, distant, yet always loving. I look forward to reading more books by this author, and recommend this one heartily!

Thirtyish Allegra O'Riordan leaves her Chicago home to attend the funeral of her father. While going through his things, Allegra comes across a picture of her mother that stuns the single woman to the core of her soul. Instead of the prudish, cold woman she vaguely remembers having died when Allegra was three years old, the photograph contains a smiling, very happy, and extremely beautiful woman. The inscription, which includes the word "love", is to someone who is a complete unknown to Allegra.

Allegra needs to learn more about her mother. She goes to Los Angeles where her mother lived. However, friends and relatives empathize with Allegra, but avoid responding to her inquiries. However, the insistent young woman continues her quest to uncover the mystery behind Theresa Higgins O'Roarke.

THE GIRL IN THE PHOTOGRAPH is an interesting quest for one's roots that will elate and anger readers. For most of the novel, the story line is a crisp, personal mystery. The novel is laden with large doses of Catholicism, but that actually adds to the personal endeavor of the female lead. Allegra is an appealing character who, for the more part, acts as an amateur sleuth would be expected to behave in trying to ferret out family secrets. However, the ending is somewhat of a disappointment because of the lead protagonist's reaction to the mystery of her mother, making a fabulous tale take a slight dip in the level of excellence.

Harriet Klausner

I found this book quite absorbing at times. The mystery was quite interesting. I wanted to know the story of the main character's mother as much as she did. I found some of the writer's stylistic habits hard to get used to, but once I knew what to expect it was fine. She has the main character go into her head and do a running comedy routine and it can be distracting. Also, the ending was rather simplistic. I didn't like the judgemental tone of it.

For a book that has such an unusual beginning, this story really takes you through some interesting travails. The only problem with the book is that I wished there were an epilogue to tell us what Allegra did after she went back home. Finding the true identity of the girl in the photograph and learning about her was a worldview-altering experience. My curiosity wanted to be satisfied as to what Allegra did after coming to grips with that knowledge.

This minor point notwithstanding, this book makes you think. You begin to think about the influence of the Catholic religion on a person. You begin to think about what love really means and how marrying for social standing is an antiquated notion. You begin to recall that being an intellectual is not a bad thing. You remember that LA once was a town that didn't appear to be dominated completely by media types. In reality, it is not, but we who live elsewhere can be duped into thinking it is.

It took me a while after reading this before all these ideas and more began to arise in my thinking. Maybe that is the best legacy that we get from Ms Donnelly's book. It does not follow the conventional formula for a "character discovers something new about their world" book. Perhaps that's why some will find it difficult to read and assimiliate. I enjoyed it and I would recommend it highly to anyone who likes books that are unique and off the beaten path.

I also REALLY liked the attention to details and the thoughts that were inside Allegra's head. I felt as though I really could perceive what Allegra was thinking. It is difficult to write from the perspective of an all knowing narrator and have the internal trials and tribulations of a character not seem contrived. Having been to Southern California, the detail to the settings was really refreshing.

Great job, Ms. Donnelly. I eagerly await your next book.

Thirtyish Allegra O'Riordan leaves her Chicago home to attend the funeral of her father. While going through his things, Allegra comes across a picture of her mother that stuns the single woman to the core of her soul. Instead of the prudish, cold woman she vaguely remembers having died when Allegra was three years old, the photograph contains a smiling, very happy, and extremely beautiful woman. The inscription, which includes the word "love", is to someone who is a complete unknown to Allegra.

Allegra needs to learn more about her mother. She goes to Los Angeles where her mother lived. However, friends and relatives empathize with Allegra, but avoid responding to her inquiries. However, the insistent young woman continues her quest to uncover the mystery behind Theresa Higgins O'Roarke.

THE GIRL IN THE PHOTOGRAPH is an interesting quest for one's roots that will elate and anger readers. For most of the novel, the story line is a crisp, personal mystery. The novel is laden with large doses of Catholicism, but that actually adds to the personal endeavor of the female lead. Allegra is an appealing character who, for the more part, acts as an amateur sleuth would be expected to behave in trying to ferret out family secrets. However, the ending is somewhat of a disappointment because of the lead protagonist's reaction to the mystery of her mother, making a fabulous tale take a slight dip in the level of excellence.

Harriet Klausner

The author has a unique, almost "stream of consciousness" approach to writing that takes until chapter three to get used to. But the bottom line is simply this: this promising and intriguing story follows a standard soap opera ploy of dangling substantive pieces of information just out of reach, then manufacturing contrived roadblocks or pulling back just in time to prevent discovery, eventually numbing the viewer (and in the case of this book, the reader) into not caring if the secret is ever uncovered. In spite of this, I finished the book hoping that the conclusion would justify the plot ploys. Alas, it was not to be. The conclusion was the biggest disappointment. The ridiculously contrived ending - that fate or history, was repeating itself, but in a legitimate way was silly! The failure to explore the relationship between the siblings was a lost opportunity that was unsatisfying. Finally, while the author did characterize some aspect of the Irish Catholic experience, as an Irish Catholic myself, I related more to Frank McCourt than I did with the rancor expressed by the author. Definitely fodder for a Lifetime for Woman movie. Not a judgement of Lifetime movies, but more a judgement of the disappointment in this book.

Having been a reader of over 50 years most fiction bores me. I could not put this book down. I got so absorbed in it I was thinking it was Sunday evening because in the book it was a Sunday evening. It was actually a Thursday.

I picked this book up early in the morning and was finished with it early evening. In other words, it is a quick, suspenseful read, for the most part. However, the repetition of Allegra running into the same roadblocks (namely, characters who are experts at changing the subject) again and again was grating and tiresome after awhile. That being said, the end of the novel was a royal let down and I was so dismayed by it that I am posting my first Amazon review ever. First of all, the ending is far too simplistic... to the point of ignorance. After she finds out the truth about her mother, she is all of a sudden honky dory with her grating/tiresome/truth-alluding relatives? Does this mean that keeping such secrets from a person is acceptable? Even when they are in their thirties? Allegra is angry and pissed off at her mother when she finds out the truth, and wishes that she never knew... and that's it? Where is the character development? Is everything that black and white to Catholics? I was also extremely disturbed by the judgemental tone at the end. I had an unpleasant image of the author as "one of those crazy Catholics" deeming me as an evil sinner for being bewildered at the utter disregarding of the suggested complex personality of Allegra's m0ther--you know, the human aspect of of her mother. Unless this novel really is a satirical jab at how Allegra (and her newly judgemental and adopted "Theresa is evil" mentality) is a product of her family which is the same way, this book gets a two thumbs down from me.

The variety of opinions, obviously emotionally held in many cases, about this book are as fascinating as the book itself. It was not anti-Catholic, not anti-single woman as some reviewers have suggested; it was the story of a horribly dysfunctional family that happened to play out its generations within the confines of the Catholic faith. And while it may have been slightly predictable regarding the protagonist's mother's long ago actions, the full explanation of who her mother was was quite unusual. I do wish she had gone into the protagonist's emotions as she heard it, but I couldn't put this book down. She, Donnelly, does as good a job as I've ever seen at proving the truth of Auden's lines from "Song of the Master and Boatswain," "...The nightingales are sobbing in the orchards of our mothers, and hearts that we broke long ago have long been breaking others."
I can't imagine anyone reading this book without reflecting painfully upon how evil and stupidity in families echos down the generations. Look at the ever rippling effects of her mother's being the way she was, and look even beyond that to why she was as she was.
And as for those who wanted a neater ending, there are no neat endings in dysfunctional families.

This book started out well, but was very predictable. It reads a little like a mystery investigation, but was too predictable to keep me interested.