Paul Theroux's brilliant new novel ends with a startling scene. Maude Coffin Pratt, a famous American photographer, is attending the private view of a retrospective exhibition of her life's work…. With the arrival of the young man who has organised the the show, it becomes deafening. Maude realises that it is he, Frank Fusco—the toadying recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship—who is the hero of the hour. The artist herself is a mere onlooker. She remains where she always was—on the periphery.

Picture Palace is a very funny book about a very sad human being. Maude is a perpetual spectator, fated to record what she cannot experience. (pp. 275-76)

Her lens at the ready, she mingles with the mighty…. Hers is a vicarious existence, like a certain kind of novelist's—almost, one might say, like Paul Theroux's. He's a bit of an onlooker, too.

Picture Palace...