Amazon.co.uk Review
After every night of coke-fuelled infidelities, magazine editor Martin Powell takes a smoked ham sandwich to bed in Matt Thorne's
Pictures of You. He's that kind of a man. Reliable--up to a point--and, in spite of spending his waking hours editing one of Britain's least respected men's magazines, a down-to-earth bloke. His faithful assistant Alison, on the other hand, is not so much down-to-earth as one of nature's true doormats. She goes out to earn the money while her flatmates--feckless boyfriend Adrian and her pathologically promiscuous sister Suzanne--eat their way through the larder.
But, as we join Martin and Alison in Thorne's latest, stylishly witty yarn, everything is on the cusp of change. Martin's comfortable routine of one-night stands and discrete lap-dancing clubs is about to turn nasty. Very nasty. And Alison's about to discover that she has the power to transform--not just her own life, but Martin's with it. Matt Thorne's skill--honed to near-perfection in his three previous novels, Tourist, Eight Minutes Idle and Dreaming of Strangers--lies in his precise, almost surgical dissection of characters and relationships. The uneasy truce between good-girl Alison and her wildcat sister, the death throes of Martin's marriage to the world-weary Claudia--all are painted with a vivid and convincing attention to detail that the likes of Julian Barnes should envy. Equally remarkable is Thorne's ceaselessly funny world-view--one that never fails to induce an element of the sardonic into the bleakest of situations. For a snapshot of real people in turmoil, you can't do better than this book. --Matthew Baylis
Review
Young British novelist Matt Thorne continues to show great promise as he follows up the gentle, offbeat love affair of his latest novel, Dreaming of Strangers, with a darkly humorous excursion into the sleazier territory of the metropolis. Martin is the epitome of contemporary urban success: editor of Force, a men's magazine, he's in his mid-thirties and he's seemingly got it made. His life, though, is on the verge of falling apart as the knives are sharpened at the magazine, his marriage creaks under a series of unhappy infidelities and his social life degenerates into a hedonistic reflex action pursued alongside some very weird friends. Alison is his twenty-something assistant and has a crush on her boss, who is a nice guy despite the self-destructive habits. She won't do anything about it, though as she relishes unrequited passions and is comfortable with her good if very stoned boyfriend. As Martin's life goes into meltdown Alison must decide if she wants to blow hers up. The characterization of the twenty and thirty-somethings is mercilessly well observed, their fashionable hangouts and hang-ups providing the story with a cynical background mitigated by the true romance at its core. Riven with infidelity, drugs, good sex, bad porn, the writing is very sharp and funny, creating such disastrous circumstances that the suspense of whether Martin and Alison will get it together is successfully maintained until the last page. (Kirkus UK)
