I feel sure you must have a close connection with art to have written this story. The studio scenes are so vivid, you cannot jusy visualise them but smell them too. Am I right in this?
I found Juliet quite hard to relate to. She has her
conflict with her strict Jewish upbringing to cope with and her husband's disappearance must make it hard for people to know how to help her but she seems not too concerned about her own son when he takes off which is strange. One would imagine a mother clinging more closely to her son in the circumstances.
Maybe in a sense all our lives are full of "portraits" as in a gallery. We all fill many roles in life after all. Perhaps this was also in the mind of the author when she chose this structure.
An intriguing read and thank you to Gransnet for my copy.
