On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever

Isabelle Stein, one of the main characters in Caroline Leavitt’s affecting new novel, Pictures of You, is an old-fashioned photographer, preferring film to digital.

“It’s richer,” she tells nine-year-old Sam Nash, showing him how to focus the camera and work the flash. “It shows more, I think.” Later, she adds, “Sometimes photographs show things that aren’t there, you have to look deeper, to see what might be hidden.”

Leavitt might well be describing her own skill as a writer, one not content with surface images. Pictures of You is a rich, nuanced  portrait of four lives intertwined by tragic coincidence: Two women fleeing their marriages on Cape Cod collide on a foggy road, and one dies. The survivor, stunned by a bevy of emotions, finds herself drawn to the dead woman’s confused, grieving husband and to her asthmatic son, who witnessed the accident.

But that summary doesn’t capture the intimacy with which the characters and their secret lives unfold in unexpected ways. Leavitt endows each with a complex back story as they try to move forward. Isabelle, always so resourceful, feels beaten down after the accident, which capped the wreck of her marriage. Charlie Nash doesn’t understand why his wife April had a suitcase for herself in the car but not one for Sam. And Sam — ah, Sam. Inhaler in hand, he braves bullies at school and clings to the notion that Isabelle, glimpsed on the roadside, is an angel who will somehow lead him to his mother.

It might sound grim, but it isn’t. It just feels real, with humor and hope glinting through the dark times. (Witness the essential role played by a tortoise named Nelson.) Leavitt cares about her flawed characters, and readers care, too.

“How did things happen?” Charlie muses to himself. He has tried to be a good guy. “You could be generous with the love you gave, with the care you took with others. You could follow all the commandments that made sense to you and still the world could sideswipe you. ” 

Charlie, Sam and Isabelle are left to pick up the pieces in surprising yet realistic ways. Leavitt’s picture of them is moving and memorable.

Open Book: I received an advance galley of Caroline Leavitt’s Pictures Of You (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill). Caroline and I first exchanged e-mails when we were both reviewing for newspapers some years ago. Now we’re Facebook friends. I hope we actually meet someday so I can see the red cowboy boots she’s wearing on book tour.