The Very Picture Of You [Paperback]

"The Very Picture of You" is a cute read. Written in the same style as "A Vintage Affair", however not as good.

Ella Graham is a 35 year old portrait painter who is starting to make a name for herself in London. She has a devoted younger half sister, a loving step-father and a high-strung mother who has given Ella little information about Ella's father who deserted the family. Ella has never forgotten him however, and has a decision to make when he calls and asks to explain his side of the story.

During the course of the book, Ella's story/life becomes inter-locked with the many interesting characters portraits she is painting. They include Iris, an 80 year old women who also has a sad story of abandonment, Celine a women approaching her 40th birthday who is craving a change in her life, Mike a government official who may be involved in a hit-run- accident, and Grace a posthumous portrait of a cyclist whose essence Ella wants to capture for her family. She is also reluctantly painting her sisters fiance, Nate, who she considers a loathsome boor, or is he? As all these stories weave together/and her portraits are finished, Ella learns a lot about herself, her family and what she wants/needs from life.

"The Very Picture of You" and Ella's road to self-discovery was predictable. As the reader, it was easy to depict what each portrait needed to teach Ella, even before she finished painting her subject. I actually found some of the sub-plots/characters more interesting then Ella's. If your looking for a non-taxing end of the summer read, which tidies up all pieces, give it a try. If your looking for as good or better read than "A Vintage Affair" you might be disappointed.

The Very Picture of You is a pleasant and satisfying read. The main character, Ella Graham, is a well known portrait artist whose personal life is somewhat disordered. She is happy with her career, not so much with her romantic life. She is having tiffs with her mother about her biological father, who walked out on the family when she was only five. Her mother was a famous dancer, now remarried, who is still bitter about " the other woman" causing the breakup of the family. Ella loves her stepdad but is beginning to wonder about her father. Ella has a half sister, Chloe, who has met a new man, Nate and is rebuilding her life after a doomed affair with a married man. Ella is very antagonistic towards Nate after overhearing something she shouldn't have but ends up having to paint his portrait after Chloe wins her services in a charity raffle. After she starts the work on the painting, Ella learns there is a great deal more to Nate than she originally saw. Besides Nate, Ella is painting three other portraits. One is of an elderly woman named Iris, who has a painting in her house that leads to the telling of a poignant story that resonates with Ella. Another portrait is of a local politician who is going through an emotional crisis that changes his appearance and personality. There is a mystery about this man that may be tied to the hit and run death of a local woman. The third portrait is of a soon to be forty woman who is totally not into the idea of the portait her husband has comissioned. Initially she appears to be shallow and selfish-all surface and no substance.
Ms. Wolfe skillfully intoduces the four"sitters" and little by little gives us glimpses into their lives and personalities. Ella's interactions with the four leads to changes in her life and attitude. Just like in a picture, there are things that have happened and are happening that are not what they seem on the surface. Ella will need to delve deeper into her past in order to have a better future. There are characters in this story we may find unlikeable but we understand in the end why they acted as they did. Ms. Wolfe doesn't excuse bad behavior nor does she punish it. The characters have punished themselves when you really look at them and how they have lived their lives.

This books has some parts that are a little formulaic but for the most part it is an interesting look at how people present themselves,how deep those outer layers can go and the work it takes for people to keep those layers intact.

For a portrait artist like the heroine of this novel, Ella Graham, having a good knowledge of how you're going to portray your client is probably a good idea. But the reader sitting down with a new novel shouldn't see the rough lines sketched out so far in advance that there are no surprises or even much sense of curiosity left, as Isabel Wolff does in this new book. There were times when I literally closed it and flung it at the wall, I was so irritated by the very obvious plot lines. OF COURSE there is going to be an unexpected link between two of Ella's portraiture clients. OF COURSE she is going to learn an important lesson from another sitter about father/daughter relationships -- but the full anecdote won't be revealed until she's in a receptive moment. When Wolff isn't being predictable, she's delivering the borderline unbelievable. Within two hours of spending time with her sister's fiance, Ella has gone from loathing the guy to falling in love with him, for instance.

Don't misunderstand me: this is a light, fluffy feel good novel -- a bit of froth that would be a perfect beach book or something you could read to cheer yourself up if you're in a gloomy state of mind. There are plenty of chick lit (or hen lit) books out there that do offer a bit of extra oomph without settling for something that too often feels like a slightly less formulaic Harlequin novel. There are elements in here that could have formed the basis for something richer and more complex: as Ella's half-sister prepares for her wedding, plots and subplots revolving around children and parents, matrimony and adultery, past and present emerge. But at least two major players -- characters who alter events -- never make a personal appearance in the novel in their own right, and others, such as Ella's mother, are two-dimensional caricatures. It amazed me from the start that an apparently perceptive, intelligent character like Ella would not be able to see that her mother's version of her father's departure from their lives might not be the whole story, and Ella's willingness to be pushed around made me less able to empathize with her or even view her as a real, interesting character -- something that is vital in chick lit, IMO.

This book is a startling contrast with Wolff's previous offering and the book with which she made her US breakthrough, A Vintage Affair: A Novel. That was a lively and amusing of chick lit at its best, funny and moving and convincing, all at once. This? It felt like the shell of a novel. Like cotton candy, I enjoyed consuming at least some of it, but rapidly found myself with too much sugar floating through my system and craving something solid. I've rated it 2.5 stars, am rounding up because the writing was solid. Too bad that neither the plot nor the characters did justice to it. I recommend reading "A Vintage Affair" instead, or looking for something written by Katie Fforde or Trisha Ashley.