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Picture Palace (Paperback)

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4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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Hardcover Available from these sellers. Published April 30, 1978	Hardcover	--	$3.90	$0.01
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Paperback Available from these sellers. Published September 30, 1999	Paperback	--	$10.00	$0.01
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Mass Market Paperback Available from these sellers. Published April 11, 1979 Mass Market Paperback: A smaller paperback commonly used for bestsellers and genre fiction.	Mass Market Paperback	--	--	$0.01

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

World-famous photographer Maude Coffin Pratt has pointed her lens at the beautiful, obscure, and obscene, and at the private places and public parts of the famous, from Gertrude Stein to Graham Greene. When the seventy-year-old Maude rummages through her archives in preparation for a triumphant retrospective, the resurrected images unleash a flood of suppressed memories--of her extraordinary life, her celebrated subjects, and the dark, painful secret at the core of her existence.

Theroux's "superbly crafted, elegantly controlled novel" (Washington Post Book Review)

"Vibrant and compelling...Paul Theroux at his satirical best." --Anne Tyler, The New York Times Book Review

"Profound and effective, not to mention entertaining.. . . For all the peculiar brilliance of its surface, Picture Palace is a novel whose depths you can drown in.. . . Absolutely brilliant." --Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times

"Dazzling. . . audacious. . . altogether captivating." --The Philadelphia Inquirer

About the Author

Paul Theroux is the bestselling author of more than twenty books. He divides his time between Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and Hawaii.

Product Details

Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (October 1, 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0140050728
ISBN-13: 978-0140050721
Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 4.8 x 0.3 inches
Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces

Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,600,705 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
Popular in this category: (What's this?)
#84 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Authors, A-Z > ( T ) > Theroux, Paul

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› Visit Amazon's Paul Theroux Page

Look Inside This Book

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Citations (learn more)

33 books cite this book:

Graham Greene: A Literary Life (Literary Lives) by Neil Sinyard on page 108, Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
The Family Arsenal by Paul Theroux in Front Matter (1), Front Matter (2), and Back Matter
The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia by Paul Theroux in Front Matter, and Back Matter
The Ones That Are Wanted: Communication and the Politics of Representation in a Photographic Exhibition by Corinne Kratz on page 98, and Back Matter
Sir Vidia's Shadow: A Friendship Across Five Continents by Paul Theroux in Front Matter, and Back Matter

See all 33 books citing this book

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Customer Reviews

3 Reviews

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4 star:		(2)
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Average Customer Review

4.3 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Story of Love, Photography, and Cape Cod, July 13, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Picture Palace (Paperback)

This is one of my favorite books. Whereas Theroux often has a hard time depicting love convincingly and sometimes doesn't even try, I found the unrequited love between brother and sister in this book to be fierce and intensely tragic. The historical backdrop of the development of photography is brilliantly conceived and realized, as is the ongoing dialogue of the old woman, retired, reliving her past on Cape Cod. In many ways uncharacteristic of Theroux's brash, egocentric style, this book uses a strong feminine voice that evokes a very unforgettable personality. Good fun to read

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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A very strange book, September 29, 2001

By A Customer

The premise for this novel resides in the main character's desire to bed her brother. Her desire for him motivates her life and thinking; her brilliant career in photography serves only as a means to gain his respect and um, affection. Sadly, the other sister wins the brother's favors. Our heroine avoids a complete breakdown but does contract hysterical blindness when she learns the awful truth. Theroux sets up a Conradesque narrative framework, and the female narrator often launches into some turgid prose detailing the passionate vagaries of her inner life. What struck me was the incestual motivation for her great work so admired by others. A commentary on the creation of art, its basis not necessarily as pure as we'd like to imagine?

A brilliant novel in many respects, I only subtract a star due to the (in my opinion, of course) overblown nature of some of Maude's rantings. Perhaps that was part of the point -- her visceral passion.

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Shame It's Out-of-Print, February 13, 2003

By A Customer

Though I doubt it will be for long. This is quite possibly Theroux's most ambitious project in straight *fiction*, and it's extremely well-written and well-crafted. The "voice" of the elderly female narrator is at times just a bit unconvincing, but as a novelist, Theroux isn't at all what one might think from his numerous "travel" books--this is riveting and almost shocking, and quite vivid.

Finally, Theroux is one of those few novelists (Iris Murdoch and Robertson Davies come to mind) who seamlessly weaves a large amount of knowledge, history and culture into his narratives. In its way, this is also one of the finest books on photography ever written. I encourage you to find a copy--there's something here for those who like literary fiction, vivid description and...an excellent story.

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