Pictures Of You by Caroline Leavitt, Allen & Unwin, $27.99.
There’s something rather satisfying about a book you can’t instantly classify, that can’t be neatly filed away as a romance, a mystery or an emotional drama.
That is the very joy you’ll find in Pictures Of You, which magically combines all three.
The tipping point comes when four lives are changed forever, after two cars collide on a foggy highway, killing one of the drivers.
The survivor, Isabelle, is a photographer who is fleeing her cheating husband, and her life becomes entwined with the grieving husband and son that the other driver, April, left behind.
Together they try to solve the mystery of where April was running to. Why was there a suitcase in the car? And why was her son there?
The author is an expert storyteller, who alternates perspective among the three leading characters — but it was not an easy road for her.
“I tend to write about what obsesses me and I’ve always been very phobic about cars and car accidents,” Caroline says. “I’ve had my licence since I was 16, but have driven once, and then felt so panicked I have never driven again.
“So, because I always worried I would be in an accident and kill someone, I had been thinking about writing a novel about it for many years, hoping to purge my fears. Didn’t work.”
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