The Woman in the Picture [Paperback]

A fascinating novel, largely about the development of film in the 1930s and about the effect the surrealist art movement had on cinema. Henry Whitaker, Wilson's hero, is an assistant film director with a tendency to fantasize about his own life and about his life being part of some greater 'plan'. We see this right from the very first chapter, when Henry travels to Germany and sleeps with a woman who he believes - on no particularly clear evidence - may have slept with his father during World War I before his father was killed. The novel follows Henry through his rise to fame as a film director, particularly after he makes the decision to collaborate with his friend Christopher - a man with a strong social conscience - on documentary films about the working classes. But at the same time that his successes on screen grow, Henry begins to suffer more and more from fantasies about believing there are signs and patterns in his own life showing that things are 'meant' or that he 'must' act in a certain way. This troubles his wife Nicky, a sweet woman from a Home Counties sort of background, but much more intelligent than Henry ever gives her credit for. It also - particularly with the approach to World War II - begins to trouble Henry's actor friend William and William's boyfriend, brilliant German camera-man Karl. Henry's encounter with surrealist art doesn't help Henry's story alternates with chapters told from the point of view of his daughter Miranda, who had a terrible relationship with her father and has spent most of her life in America, but returns to England shortly before a festival to celebrate her father's work. Back in the UK for the first time in years, Miranda begins to meditate on her father. What was the reason that her mother (Henry's second wife) committed suicide? Why did Henry's fame decline so sharply after World War II? Miranda turns detective to find out, attempting to fill in the gaps in her knowledge about Henry Whitaker.

Wilson brings the film world of the 1930s - of particular interest to me as my partner's family were in the film industry - brilliantly to life, filling the novel with immaculate historical detail without ever becoming pedantic. There's also much interesting information in the novel about the cultural life and the social situation in the 1930s, and the shadow still cast by World War I, even years later. The characters are believable and interesting. Henry is compelling even if not likeable, and Wilson manages to convey his delusions well, even in a first-person narrative. I liked - and felt sorry for - Nicky; it would have been good perhaps to have had a bit of the story told from her point of view as well. I also liked William and Karl very much. Christopher I found extremely interesting and would have liked to read more about - what happened to him in the end, I wonder, and was he actually attracted to Henry or his close friend? I found the modern bits of the novel, though interesting, slightly less strong. Miranda was not quite as compelling and interesting a narrator as Henry - Wilson never quite fleshed her out, I felt - and I was slightly puzzled by the final stages of solving the mystery, particularly the bits involving the weird Diddy Niddle (Ken Dodd??). Still, these sections had the exciting feel of a detective story, and one certainly cared about Miranda enough to enjoy her company. All in all, a five-star read.