Getting the Picture-Sarah Salway

Getting the Picture
Sarah Salway
Ballantine, Mar 23 2010, $15.00
ISBN: 9780345481016

The elderly residents of Pilgrim House are all females except for crusty stuffy George Griffiths. His being the only male not on staff ends when nude female model photographer Martin Morris moves into the retirement home.

Martin has a hidden agenda. Decades ago he met and fell in love with Mrs. George Griffiths. His Mo however chose to stay with her spouse and their children although Martin believes he was the love of her life as she was his as proven by the letters of love he wrote his beloved but wisely never sent. He needs to know why she never left the priggish snob. Although Mo is dead, Martin still writes to her as if she was alive and ready to join him even as he begins to investigate the life of Mo with George, who never knew of his wife’s affair with Martin.

This is a fascinating character study that looks deep into the relationships at a retirement home filled with feisty individuals who all seem full of life. However, the prime focus is the intriguing triangle as the connecting woman is dead while one of the men in her life is unaware that the other was in her life albeit forty tears ago. Using letters (not just those written but not mailed by Martin), Getting the Picture is an entertaining relationship drama.

Harriet Klausner