[The Picture Palace] is an entertainment in the best sense…. Theroux knows what he's about, writing lively narrative, controlling the mystery story element of his plot, withholding a significant scene. Maude Coffin Pratt is a famous photographer, an appealing, arrogant, cantankerous old woman and a brilliant creation on Theroux's part. She has become a legend and, though she has spent her life in seeing the major events and most celebrated faces of the century and in sorting out art from fraud and fashion, in her pride Maude has lost sight of her self and come to believe in her own legend. (p. 432)

The main irony of The Picture Palace is that as Maude's legend comes unwound through an exploration of her past, a new force is given to the myth of the great woman photographer in a retrospective show of her work…. (p. 433)

Theroux's imagery of seeing and...