The Very Picture of You: A Novel (edition 2011)

‘The Very Picture of You’ was kindly provided to me by Netgalley for Random House Publishing Group .

Interested in more of my reviews? Visit my blog!

‘I felt like Tantalus, neck-deep in water that he could never drink, grasping at fruit that was always just out of reach.’

Storyline
Ella is an extremely successful portrait artist who has just been asked by her sister Chloe to do a portrait of her future brother-in-law, Nate, whom she despises. Early on in Nate and Chloe’s relationship, Ella overheard Nate speaking to someone and it appeared that he was not having an honest relationship with Chloe and that forever changed her opinion of him. After only their first sitting where she begins Nate’s portrait, her feelings have drastically changed towards him and Ella doesn’t know how to stop them, even if she wanted to.

Ella is also dealing with recent revelations regarding the father who left her and her mother when Ella was only five years old. Her mother always told her how he abandoned them after she caught him with another woman and that he made the decision to leave his family in order to be with her. Ella never had a reason to doubt her mother but when she discovers that may not be an accurate accounting of what actually happened she is more confused than ever.

Thoughts
This was a very interesting read and I enjoyed it immensely. Once the story began to unfold I had an idea of how it would all unveil; however, Isabel Wolff wrapped up all of the loose ends fabulously. I feared that it would be your ‘typical’ type of ending but I was left completely satisfied. I loved the details of Ella’s painting sessions: the particulars of the colors she uses, how she mixes them and the steps she takes to create the portrait of the person she’s painting.

‘Then came the moment when I put in the very last thing I ever add to a portrait – the light in the eyes. That’s when I feel like Pygmalion, having life breathed into his statue; because it’s that little flick of white in each pupil that finally – ping! – brings a portrait alive.’

I also enjoyed the closeness she develops with the people she paints and the stories she learns about them and how it’s woven into the story. It reminded me quite a lot of Isabel Wolff’s other novel that I’ve read, A Vintage Affair, and how the main character becomes immersed in one of her customer’s lives. (Also a fabulous read)

There were parts of this novel that I had a hard time liking at first, primarily the feelings that Ella develops for her sister’s fiancée. Strangely unfitting and not exactly understandable… her infatuation with him occurred a bit too quickly for it to be plausible in my opinion. Fortunately though, it was well written and by the end I was mollified with the outcome.

I also had difficulty liking her mother who was a major character in the story. Despite her tale of what had happened between her and Ella’s father, the fact that she withheld so much information for so long and even after she told it there still seemed to be something missing and I believed her to still be lying throughout the entire story. It’s hard to really care for a character if you feel that they are being deceitful. I loved the side-story of Grace and Mike that was the part of the story that touched me the most.

This is now the second book I’ve read by Isabel Wolff and it certainly won’t be the last. ( )

2,5 étoiles, en fait.
Bien mais sans être fascinant non plus. J'ai davantage aimé les relations entre le peintre et ses modèles que l'histoire d'amour, qui n'a pas fait battre mon petit coeur. Malgré tout, on évite la dégoulinade et les apitoiements sur soi-même, ce qu n'est pas pour me déplaire.

Billet plus complet à venir sur le blog. ( )

Sweet book, but very predictable. I like her other work, A Vintage Affair much better! ( )

Don't let the first chapter put you off. The author must have had a day of poor writing, but the rest of the book was very enjoyable. ( )

F Wolff

A much better story than I was expecting and I really enjoyed it! The characters were well developed and I especially connected with main character. I primarily read southern literature and fiction but I loved the fact that this book was set it England. Nice, easy, chic lit read. ( )

This book tell the story of Ella, a potrait painter who have a talent to paint a person and reveal a quality that the sitter, themselves may not know. Ella, who have been abandoned by her own biological father, found it especially hard to handle when her father send an email to contact her after more than 30 years. She know about the abandonment and she cant bring herself to meet up with him eventhough she really want to know about him. At the same time, she found herself to be attracted to her sister's fiance, Nate whom she thought was two timing her sister. It is not helping her when she have to endured the two hourly sitting to draw the potrait of Nate on her sister' request. There are also some sub story plot which tell the story of Ella's sitters when each of them revealed their story during their session with Ella. These stories have make the book very interesting to read.

There are quite a number of characters in the book ranging from Ella's immediate family, the sitters and their friends and relatives. And among those characters, i really dislikes Ella's mother, Sue the most. At first reading the story about Ella's abandonment, one may feel sorry for her as she is the victim yet, as the story developed, Sue's character become more manipulative and demanding to such extent that i couldnt stand her anymore.

Although this is the first book i read about the author, i really like the way the story was written. Although there are subplots, quite a few actually, but the way it was told, did not make the reader confused and it does not overlapping each other. ( )

This was a mildly interesting story about a painter discovering family secrets while falling for her sister's fiance . I agree with other readers that delving into the other clients' stories and keeping the family drama minimal would've made for a stronger novel . But this was well written and I will look for other books by the author . ( )

This is the second book by Isabel Wolff I’ve read. The first was A Vintage Affair which I absolutely loved. I was so happy to find I loved this one just as much.

I’ve never really thought about having my portrait painted but after having read this it sounds like something I’d like to do. I always thought it must be a dull, tedious, drawn out affair. Now, I see it can be an enlightening experience and very interesting. Well, that it if every painter is like Ella. She is such a lovely character. The way in which she gets to know her “sitters” is on par to a psychiatrist. I never thought before of there being a difference about whether a portrait was from life or a photo but now it makes perfect sense. Ella won’t paint a portrait from a picture (though she does break her rule for a very good reason). Now, I want to pay attention and see if I can tell the difference.

I wasn’t sure what I felt about the love story until the very end and then a was very happy with the way everything turned out. Even if it was a little “easy” I was still very satisfied. I have to say was surprised by Ella’s mother’s back story. I can see now that it was all there in front of me and I just didn’t notice it. I was probably blinded by my soap opera idea of what the story was and therefore missed a lot of the clues.

All the characters were nicely fleshed out and the author has a such a wonderful ability to tell a deep and interesting life story of her older characters. When I heard Iris, one of Ella’s sitters, history I couldn’t help but think of the story of the little blue coat in A Vintage Affair. It was that story that really made me love that book.

I’m happy to say Isabel Wolff has seven other novels still left for me to read and I can’t wait to get to them. I have nothing but high hopes.

Thank you to Random House for my copy of The Very Picture of You. ( )

I loved this book. I had not read one of her books since Minty Malone! I am going to look up some of her other titles that I missed. This was well written, had likeable characters and a great story. Just the right amount of descriptiveness. ( )

I had so enjoyed A Vintage Affair; I was quite pleased to read The Very Picture of You by the same author. And I was not disappointed.

I found the descriptions about portraiture simply fascinating. I’ve never read anything about painting someone’s portrait and I think the author did a great job. The back stories about the people getting their portrait done were so interesting. If I had a complaint (which I really don’t), I wish there could have been more.

The characters were fully developed and quite believable. The setting in modern day London was fascinating too as that’s some place I’ve always wanted to visit. I saw the romance coming a mile away—for some that would be a turnoff, but not for me. I enjoyed the journey immensely.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes a good story. ( )

Just because you know where you're going, doesn't mean you can't enjoy the ride along the way. The Very Picture of You is a predictable love story, enlivened by a most interesting look at the art of portrait painting. The author shines when discussing the difference between a likeness and a picture with a soul, and how an artist gets there. Set in contemporary London, location and characters are nicely done and believable. Bottom line: This is a sweet story about secrets and forgiveness, sisterly love, romance and art. ( )

While I enjoyed this book, I did not like it nearly as much as A Vintage Affair. This book seemed a bit predictable to me. I enjoyed the charaters and was interested in what was going on in their lives, but, I was looking for a few more surprises. Wolff is a great storyteller and this would be a good read for a day on the beach. The stories of the people Ella was painting were interesting, but again, it was not hard to figure out what was going to happen. I would have an easier time recommending A Vintage Affair to readers than this book. Fans of chicklit would most likely prefer The Very Picture of You. ( )

Perfectly pleasant read. Completely predictable but over all not too bad. Based on this book I don't know that I would read anything else by this author. ( )

Ella Saville is a portrait painter with a troubled past. Abandoned by her father thirty years earlier, Ella has never stopped thinking about him. Having built a career as a portrait painter, Ella maintains a secret portrait of her father. But Ella's life is about to get even more complicated. Her sister is about to get married, Ella finds herself in love with a man she absolutely cannot have, her absent father tries to make contact, and several of her portrait clients are clearly troubled. The result is several interwoven stories all of which focus, in one way or another, on Ella's portrait painting.

This was a fairly easy and quick read, but I don't think it is one of Wolff's best. The plot was fairly predictable, and I had no trouble guessing how things would end. I didn't like this as well as Wolff's previous book, A Vintage Affair. In fact, several characters from A Vintage Affair make surprise appearances here (and wouldn't you know it, Ella's sister has her heart set on a vintage wedding gown.) Some of the book's sub-plots remain woefully underdeveloped, particularly that involving Grace, a biker who dies in a traffic accident. This book is more like a romance novel than chick lit, which is what I expect from Wolff. The ultimate objective of the book seemed to be to pair everyone up at the end. ( )

I discovered Isabel Wolff through her book "A Vintage Affair." After that book, and then "The Very Picture of You," she's made it to my auto-buy author list. I enjoyed getting to know Ella, and thought this to be a very well researched novel. The passages about Ella's painting were quite interesting and I found the characters to be very engaging. I'll be looking for her next book!

Ella is a portrait artist with complicated family past that is revealed in a well-paced plot which also follows an emerging romance that is even more complicted. ( )

In many ways the perfect book at the perfect time. Before reading it I had a stream of very mediocre reads and some were just so plodding I was really craving a book I could just tear through.

This book is engaging. I read it really fast. I felt myself reaching for it over and over in the spare minutes I had between this and that.

The characters were interesting though not particularly original. The story took a few surprising turns that were welcome to me. I actually spent quite a bit of time in the first half of the book mentally complaining about the predictability of the characters and the plot only to have the author sort of pull the rug out from under me a bit. They weren't the best or most well incorporated twists I have ever read. I will admit that I did feel deliberately mislead to a degree. That aside, on balance - I think I preferred the slight offense at being mislead over what could have been an incredibly predictable plot.

I would definitely recommend this book for a plane ride or a vacation or for any time that you want something that is just easy to read. A nice quick engaging read. ( )

This book was well written for what it is. I suppose it's simply not my type of book. I would prefer more humor, I suppose, with such light subject matter. The author does provide good insight into modern portraiture, which I found very interesting. But generally, I found the main character to be interesting only when she was talking about her art. Otherwise, she was annoyingly dim and judgmental at times, and often seemed much older (in a bad way) than her 35 years. She seemed a bit dowdy and prematurely middle aged. ( )

Contrary to the previous reviews, I loved this book. I loved the fact that Ella is an engaging character and I could not put this book down. I read it in one day I loved it that much. I loved the little twists and the main storyline and how there were some surprises thrown in the mix as well. I really enjoyed learning about portraiture and painting. I found the relationships in this novel to be very convincing and it painted a portrayal of real life situations (no pun intended). Over all a light, quick and engaging masterpiece by Isabel Wolff. ( )

I'm only a chapter or two into this book, but needed to get my Early Reviewer review in before November comes to an end. So far, I am enjoying it. Ella has just started to paint Iris and Iris has started relating an interesting story to Ella. I would say this definitely seems like my kind of book, although reading the other reviews here, it seems I may be disappointed at the end. I shall see. I will update this review when I finish the book. ( )

I was not expecting much out of this book. I read a blurb online about it, and it was going to be a romance.

It was a slow couple of chapters at the beginning. I liked the idea of the main character being a portrait painter, but did she have to speak as if she was reading aloud from Wikipedia? Nobody talks like that, in huge paragraphs of informational text.

It got better as I went along. The mysteries of the story were pretty clear from the start, but I was surprised to find that I liked the romance.
Overall, I’ll say that I liked this book for what it was. I’d anticipated literary fiction and it fell short of that, but it was a nice relaxing read. ( )

I'm a big fan of Isabel Wolff, and I was a little disappointed with the this book. Ella, an English portrait painter, is an up and coming artist. Although Ella is perceptive and capable of identifying issues of her 'sitters', I found it somewhat unbelievable that Ella could not do the same in her own life. The ending was very predictable, but unrealistic. Overall, it's a quick, easy read. ( )

I received this ARC as a part of the Librarything Early Reviewers. Ella is a portrait artist in England whose business is really taking off after getting a commission for the portrait of the Duchess of Cornwall. It is no surprise that Ella is an artist, as she spent much of her childhood drawing portraits of the father who left her and her mother for another woman. Ella yearns to learn more about her biological father but her mother never talks about him and openly discourages Ella from meeting him when she learns that he has contacted Ella through e-mail. Each of Ella's current commissions contribute to the story which is very predictable. Well written this book was an enjoyable read. ( )

The main character of this book is Ella, who paints portraits for a living. She gets to know each sitter in depth and the book revolves around each of their stories. For someone who is so intuitive when it comes to her sitters though, she is surprisingly blind to what is happening within her own life. Although a bit predictable, the characters and the story itself is enjoyable and makes for a pleasant read. No surprising twists and nowhere near as enjoyable as A Vintage Affair, but still worth the read. ( )