Financial Times
'Jo Baker is a novelist with a gift for intimate and atmospheric storytelling'
Jo Baker is a novelist with a gift for intimate and atmospheric storytelling. She crafts narratives that are eloquent about the connection between the present and the past ... The Picture Book is Baker's most ambitious work to date. Without being explicitly ghostly, it continues her pronounced interest in the invisible channels of communication between generations ... Baker skillfully delineates the currents of social change and the essential human drama that persists: the intertwining of love and grief, the moments of ecstasy that transfigure banality, and the painful throb of personal loyalty. She writes with conviction and an eye for pregnant detail. The result is an agile, keenly observed novel that evokes the minuscule rewards and disappointments of the everyday."