The pictures are all I can feel

I finally picked up my copy of Dani Shapiro's latest novel, Black & White, and I've finished it just a few days later. I don't know why I put it off for so long -- perhaps I was put off by my reaction to her last novel (which I thoroughly enjoyed, but it made me depressed in that grown-up way). Black & White centers around a woman who was photographed (intimately so) by her mother from 3 to 14, and it brings up the question of identity as something we can see, something imprinted on photographic paper. It made me think about how we remember things because we have pictures of them, or at least we think we remember them because we can still see some remnant of that time. It's a good book, and it left me thinking quite a bit. Which is clearly why I've moved on to The Photograph as my next book selection. In for a penny, in for a pound.