The Photographer's Wife Kindle Edition

Over all I enjoyed the story, but felt very uncomfortable with Sophia's boy friend's sexual appetite and demands. That part really turned me off. There were times I wanted to smack some of the characters and tell them to grow up and not take such advantage of others.

This is one of the best novels I've read this year. A fabulously intricate plot gradually unveiled through two parallel viewpoints, mother and daughter. Starting during WWII Blitz and ending in a society/cutural/family scandal taking place in the present time, we come to know all about Barbara an extraordinary woman. The reader discovers the truth gradually, although the complete and shockingly unexpected picture, is revealed towards the very end. It made me think of the many generous, selfless, worthy and loving women we never get to know, take for granted, ignore, or worse, undermine. The characters are all vividly and uniquely portrayed and the writing is compelling. I listened to the audio book, which was fabulously read. I felt alternately sad, angry, frustrated, shocked and in awe, as I read. It's not a quick, easy read, but it's definitely worth it.

This is a well told story about the opportunity charming people get to substantially rise above their ability. It shows how support comes to those lucky enough to be charming from everywhere, including the ever patient and naive wife. The story also explores the life of the naive wife and how she agrees to aid the charmer in the most extreme way. Relationships with children and friends are well described.

Bazaar is the best word that I can up with. A total waste of time. The characters did not seem real and, basically , lacked any moral compass. I have liked other of the author's books in the past but this one didn't meet my expectations.

It is such a terrible story and so poorly written I will never read this author again. I was not able to make myself finish it.

I really enjoyed this book. Going from the past to the present and back again, seeing the world through both mother and daughter’s eyes, and seeing how different generations react to situations made this a fun, thoughtful read. Can’t wait to read more of this author’s works.

I wasn't sure when l started this book if l would like the story, however after a couple of chapters l found it hard to put down. I will be looking for other titles from Nick Alexander

Marriage is never what you imagine it to be.. Girls fantasies turn into men they don't really know. Many parts of this book hit uncomfortably close to home💔

The Photographer’s Wife took me a while to get into. But once the flow started and I put together where the storyline was taking me, it was an enjoying read right up until the end.Sophie is the daughter of Barbara and the chapters flick between each of their own stories. It carefully and tragically outlines Barbara’s childhood in the war, her meeting the ‘love of her life’, her daily struggles with life back then, and her battle with her marriage and children.Tony, Barbara’s husband, and Sophie’s mother, passed away on a photography shoot and when Sophie says she wants to show his photographs in a gallery what starts to unfold are the secrets in the family. The clever thing with this book is that it does not unfold in such a way that the second main character Sophie knows about it. They are secrets shared between Barbara and the reader.There are twists in the book which are cleverly described. They are not wrote down without doubt; they leave the reader to ‘figure it out’ and this was something I had not come across before.There were moments of pure sadness, tragedy and humour. And Nick did such a good job of being able to capture the reader with their emotions. It is a book which demonstrates perception of different members of one family. A thoroughly captivating read.

I picked this because of my interest in photography and without being familiar with the author. Although I didn't like the start and almost gave up, on the whole I liked it a lot. This is a novel of two generations and I think it was my lack of interest in present-day Sophie, aspiring art photographer with a slightly pervy (as even she admits) boyfriend which put me off. It was also a while until we got the connection (I know it was obvious and but still felt like a long time in coming) with Barbara, growing up in the London blitz who eventually marries a photographer - Sophie is their second child.  Barbara is very much a child of her time and her story carries the novel through the sixties and seventies. Her hurried marriage to Tony was in a sense doomed from the start, but Barbara never waivers in her belief that it's worth saving despite Tony's behaviour which veers from impracticality to downright mental cruelty. I couldn't help feeling another writer would have had Barbara strike out on her own, but  her obstinate support of her family and loyalty to her husband becomes her strength (and is true I think to her times). The problem is that she has never shared the truth of her marriage with anyone, certainly not her daughter. In a sense the photography is not central to the story - I mean it could have been any artistic endeavour - and I did cavil at the idea 'art photography' did not exist in the fifties and sixties, but having said that, Tony's job as a press photographer and Barbara's role in it is perfect for the era with both the artistic and technical side given plenty of scope. Despite its flaws (mainly structural - beginning to slow and the twisty end a bit too fast for me) there is a lot to like in The Photographer's Wife and I would happily recommend it as a quick and engaging read. I might also take a look at what else this author has to offer.

Nick Alexander writes well, as usual; but, oh! I get so tired of the modish habit of some novelists darting backwards and forwards in time. Never has this device been used as badly and confusingly as in this novel, with 45 shortish chapters skittering chronologically and geographically all over the place. (I actually think Alexander was himself confused in one or two places!) This has made the book been so exceedingly irritating and difficult to follow that it is the main reason why I have given the book such a low rating. Another reason is that Tony Marsden and Brett Pearson are two really unpleasant characters. And a third is that it takes a long time before we see the connection between the people in the twentieth century sections and those in the twenty first.The opening chapters, set in the 1940s, give a powerful and evocative pictured of Shoreditch in the Blitz: first the bombers, then the doodlebugs and then the V2s, the terror they caused and the way they affected Minnie Doyle and her daughters, Glenda, aged twelve in 1940, and Barbara, aged six.The chapters are either about Barbara or about her daughter Sophie.Barbara had met Tony Marsden in 1950. She fell pregnant by him when she was only seventeen. Reluctantly, he married her. Though Barbara never thought of leaving him, it was not a good marriage: Tony was moody, often angrily drunk, and stayed away from home on several nights, for reasons that will later become clear. Barbara will have three miscarriages before she gives birth by Caesarean Section. (Her feelings about this I found the only moving part of the book.) Tony had made a name for himself as a brilliant photographer, and Barbara had done a lot to help him, though Tony, much as he needed her help, had resented this and refused to acknowledge it. He died in 1983 while on a photo-shoot in France. Following his death, Barbara makes a lot of painful discoveries about Tony, which she keeps from Sophie.In 2012 Sophie, herself a not very successful fashion photographer, wanted to arrange a retrospective exhibition of her father’s photographs, with the help of Brett Pearson. Brett was her lover (a very kinky one). As the Times Arts Correspondent, he had contacts with the art world. Reluctantly, Sophie agrees to the extortionate terms Brett demands for his help.Barbara makes a lot of difficulties about letting Sophie have Tony’s negatives and prints, and she doesn’t like the idea of a journalist having anything to do with the exhibition and perhaps discovering things about Tony that she does not want known; but she eventually releases the materials she holds. An exhibition was arranged in 2013, and large numbers of Tony’s friends and colleagues – many of them now in their eighties – turn up. In conversation with them, Sophie learns things about her father she never knew. And Brett learns them, too, and makes disgraceful use of what he has learnt.And at the end, a last secret is revealed which has been kept from Sophie.

This is an unusual and engaging story which alternates between two time periods. Although it’s easy to follow (which some books with alternating timelines are not), I found the constant switching a little bit jarring. I also struggled with the character of Barbara, who is the main focus in the flashback storyline and is presented as very sympathetic and likeable, whereas in the modern day storyline, where she is a secondary character, she didn’t seem likeable. I think a lot more could have been done to bring the latter day Barbara to life and reveal to her children why she is the way she is. Equally, Sophie, the main character in the modern day storyline, is fairly one dimensional and definitely not likeable. Although the loose ends are tied up at the end (and confirmed in an unnecessary epilogue for the hard of thinking), I was left feeling a bit dissatisfied and also quite sad – we could have learned a lot more about Barbara and how the events of the book had affected her. There also could have been more done with Sophie and Brett's relationship and whether one was using the other or not - this was hinted at, but not very clear, so was perhaps coincidental. On the whole, well-written and a good storyline, but the characterisation was lacking for me and I couldn’t bring myself to like it as much as I wanted to.

This is the second book by this writer that I have read. At the end of the first one I was surprised to see that Nick is a man , rather than a woman. There are few male writers that I can think of who tackle, let alone succeed so well at, writing female protagonists.This writer is interested - as I am - in the relationships that bind and break us, the things we give up for each other, the things we hold on to.At first I thought this book would have been better titled The Photographer's Daughter, because for much of it Sophie is the dominant and, to be honest, the more interesting character. She is engaged in trying to resurrect the popularity of her late father's photographic work whilst at the same time using it as a platform to launch her own career in photographic art. But the story's main focus - as it progresses - is Barbara, Sophie's mother. Barbara is very much a child and a woman of her time. Nick Alexander depicts with great puissance London of the blitz and the after-war years of Britain and the women who held it all - and their husbands - together.Although I saw the story's main plot twist coming from ten miles off, it didn't spoil the book for me. The writing was sound, the dialogue realistic, the characters flawed and human and the two story threads - Barbara's and Sophie's - alternated nicely.I have only two minor remarks. I wished that the older Barbara didn't become a facsimile of her own tetchy and difficult mother. I couldn't see the younger woman in the old and all the sympathy she had garnered in my heart dissipated in those sections. Secondly, Sophie's attitude to sex is too laddish. She wanted, thought of and spoke of sex like a man. Maybe I'm out of touch, but I think this was the only area that Nick mis-construed his otherwise excellent rendering of female.I visited Nick's website to find out a bit more about him. He describes his work as 'chick-lit.' I'd say he is doing himself a disserve there; there is nothing frivolous or lightweight about these books. The books I have read have been serious attempts to understand the people that we are in the world, society and culture that we live in.