Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize: A masterwork of love, guilt, and friendship set in Victorian Liverpool and Eastern Europe during the Crimean War. Photography is the common thread weaving together three different points of view that span the ...

It is incredible that this book is less than 150 pages. There is just so much going on here. The realities vs the fictions of war, how people delude themselves into seeing what they want to see, how perspective changes a story -- there is just so much to unpack in this book. The plot twists of Master Georgie's bizarre family unfold in shocking and powerful ways, and the use of the three different perspectives kept the book fresh and was essential to the structure. We kept finding and losing sympathy for the narrators as we analyzed their ethics and points of view. It's a dark book, but beautifully written, and with just enough ambiguity to keep us questioning things, from the motives of the characters about why they stick together and what secrets they keep to the one magically real moment at the funeral. Who was mad? Who truly loved whom? It's a shame we didn't make this a main read, because we could have talked about it for hours. Highly recommended if you're interested in dark, complex, and troubling stories.