The people in the picture - Hardcover

Middleton, Haydn

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593012887 ISBN 13: 9780593012888

Publisher: Bantam Press, 1987

Synopsis

Jasmin Piast, an illustrator, becomes obsessed with Terence Lacy, a mysterious stranger who seems to have a strange connection with the past

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Jasmine Piast is a young illustrator of children's books. Terence Lacy is an attractive Welshman of uncertain origin who comes suddenly into her life and seems to have a mysterious power that both repels and enthralls Jasmine. The people in the picture alluded to in the title are her family, and somehow Terence knows too much about them and their futures. The ambiguity of this first novel by an Oxford lecturer on British mythology is created to mirror the Welsh myth of Taliesin. Like Taliesin, Terence changes form, and Jasmine, whose sexual advances he rebuffs, must try to determine if she has somehow summoned him into existence. Middleton's writing is effective when not weighted by metaphor and preciosity. But there are too many sentences such as, "And she genuinely regarded her failure to do so as a perversion, a dark, sticky and writhing thing that cast its shadow over every other aspect of her life." Despite some good moments, the story lumbers along where it ought to soar. A contemporary novel rooted in myth is a conceit that a deft writer can carry off. But this combination of heavy-handed imagery, sometimes sloppy writing and a plot that relies on its mythological antecedent for meaning adds up to a book that tries to be grand but is only grandiose.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

Though a successful London illustrator, 33-year-old Jasmin Piast is dissatisfied with her life. Hence, while sunning in the park one afternoon, "she quite simply summoned Lacy into her life." Lacy is Terence Lacy, a powerful and peculiar Welshman who quickly assumes a proprietorial role towards Jasmin and her family after seeing their photograph. Jasmin is soon torn between her need for him and her fear of his seemingly godlike powers. Whether or not Lacy is a power for good (perhaps the mythic Welsh hero, Taliesin) or evil is subtly withheld until the end, when Jasmin must choose between him and her new friend, Roland Kinga choice between obsession and love. Well done, though probably a bit fanciful for most. Laurence Hull, Cannon Memorial Lib., Concord, N.C.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam Press
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0593012887
• ISBN 13: 9780593012888
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 207