Review: We Never Took a Bad Picture

Grief: The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
Review: We Never Took a Bad Picture

Megan Nielsen

Ashley Roth
Fiction
April Gloaming Publishing, pp. 284
Cost: $19.99

Grief is a part of life that every single one of us has to deal with, in ways big and small, yet no one seems to know how to talk about it. Grief is heavy, and putting it into words is no small task. However, author Ashley Roth takes on this duty with grace and nuance. Her debut novel, We Never Took a Bad Picture, recognizes that mourning isn’t a linear process by using a non-linear narrative and showcasing how much space grief takes up at different points in the main character’s lives. Roth shows readers that coping looks different for everyone, and that these processes can just as easily push people apart as they bring them together. 

The novel follows the lives of the Joyces, a multi-generational nexus of complicated relationship dynamics. The book builds up to the 55th anniversary party of the central characters Artie and Gloria. As the family prepares for the party, as well as Artie’s retirement from the grocery store he’s been working at since before they got married, we learn that their relationship isn’t perfect, and neither is anyone else's.

To showcase this, Roth bounces back and forth between the present day (2018) and the years that Gloria and Artie’s relationship first began to bud (1958 and onward). The nonlinear narrative serves this piece far better than a traditional chronological approach would have. Readers are afforded glimpses of the Joyce family’s dysfunctional present, immediately followed by pieces of the past that work to explain their current behavior. This allows for a deep understanding of each and every character, and an emotional connection to the family as a whole. We want them to treat each other better; we want them to heal. Yet, we watch them wrong each other over and over again in the same ways because they’re human, just like us.

Another function of Roth’s nonlinear narrative is that it shows readers that grief is cyclical. A key point of grief for the Joyce family is the death of Teddy, Artie and Gloria’s only son. His death occurred in 1988, and everyone who knew him mourns him over and over and over again. Even in 2018, 30 years later, his family still can’t settle the different ways in which they cope. When planning their anniversary party, Gloria sorts through pictures with her daughter, Autumn, while the two of them attempt to convince Artie to let them display Teddy’s pictures:

“‘About the pictures I want up at the party. I want pictures of Teddy.’

Artie shut his eyes, so he wouldn’t have to look at her. They’d had an agreement. He wouldn’t rattle her grief, and she wouldn’t question his avoidance. That was their compromise. Silence. No questions. Swallow whatever they disagreed with. They weren’t supposed to splatter the past everywhere. 

‘We can’t just let him die.’ Autumn’s voice quivered. 
He opened his eyes.
‘But he is dead.’ It was a logical statement, and he said it with logical precision” (167).

The scene above is an example of how the nonlinear structure also affords readers the opportunity to experience the same grief that the main characters do. In flashes of the past, readers become attached to Teddy as he’s described through the eyes of all who love him. We see him through Gloria as a gentle and doting son. We see him through Autumn as a little brother, bursting with poetry and potential, and inspiring her to be better through his idolization of her. We see how, despite their frequent disagreements, Artie still loves his son and wants the best for him. Through this lens, we come to love Teddy just as much as everyone else does. Then, the time period switches, our comfort is ripped away, and we are met with the bleak reality that every other character faces: Teddy is dead, and there’s nothing anyone can do to make that better.

Although Teddy’s death is the main point of mourning for the book’s main characters, each character has their own personal failures that haunt them. Gloria mourns her failed marriage by idolizing the past, despite knowing that it hadn’t been good then, either. Artie mourns the imminent loss of the only job he’s ever had, and the purpose it was able to give him that he felt he was missing at home. Autumn mourns her own failed relationships and the time she wasted on each and every one of them. These individual struggles make their shared grief even harder to handle, as none of them shares these heavy burdens. They handle them alone, scared of the vulnerability that connection can force. 

Overall, We Never Took a Bad Picture has a hefty emotional core, carried by the complex characters that readers follow throughout. Each of them showcases the many ways that grief can appear and how one can only begin to heal when they acknowledge the pain. When the Joyces begin to reconnect with each other and discuss their grief, the years of hurt begin to shed, and only then can they begin to fix what’s broken. This book is a beautifully human read, and finishing it invited me to reflect on the grief in my own life.