The Picture She Took

 

Set in England after the Great War, and Ireland after the Black and Tan War, The Picture She Took is a detective story. It interweaves the lives of an impatient and frustrated young woman whose life came alive in a bombed-out village during the First World War and a haunted young man whose memory returns again and again to the traumatic events of a day on a road in Ireland. This searching, beautiful novel is about the wars we wage against others and against ourselves; it is a powerful story of memory, flight and desire.

Virago Press, 2005

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Reviews

 

‘some of the writing is almost too beautiful… The kind of sophisticated historical romance that matches anything by Sebastian Faulks or Penelope Fitzgerald…Shaw has a great talent for getting right to the inner core of her characters’

Independent on Sunday

 

‘Shaw’s skill as a storyteller, her excellent research and poetic voice make this an exceptional work’

Irish Times

‘Nothing is quite as it seems in Shaw’s historical fiction… She takes the familiar and bends it ever so slightly out of shape… Absorbing and moving in equal measure’

Time Out

 

‘This is seamless historical fiction… the kind of sustaining yarn you’ll want in your suitcase this summer for when you’re through with the vacuous stuff.’

The Observer

 

The Picture She Took ‘is a curious and intriguing hybrid: part historical romance, part adventure story, part nature poem and part meditation on technology in a woman’s hands.’

The Guardian