Family Album

There’s something hypnotic about family stories, especially when the members of the clan seem to be both successful and also hiding very dark secrets. That’s the hook at the heart of British author Penelope Lively’s “Family Album,’’ and it is one that carries the reader a good way. Set during a reunion at a sprawling family homestead called Allersmead, this detailed work - Lively’s 16th novel - offers a delicious taste of such lives, but in a form that is ultimately too disconnected to satisfy.

(Patrick D. Rosso/Boston.com/2012) Patricia Maestranzi-Fisher, owner of Broadway Lock Company, showing off her family history in South Boston. By Patrick D. Rosso, Town Correspondent The raunchy parody video "The Real Housewives of South Boston" went viral recently and brought a bright light to Southie's unique culture. But now that a new reality show -- the real thing, not a parody -- is being discussed by TLC, South Boston has something to consider.

(Patrick D. Rosso/Boston.com/2012) Patricia Maestranzi-Fisher, owner of Broadway Lock Company, showing off her family history in South Boston. By Patrick D. Rosso, Town Correspondent The raunchy parody video "The Real Housewives of South Boston" went viral recently and brought a bright light to Southie's unique culture. But now that a new reality show -- the real thing, not a parody -- is being discussed by TLC, South Boston has something to consider.

PEOPLE ARE more than the circumstances surrounding their death. They are the sum of their life and every life counts. "Anonymous Boston," an exhibit that addresses urban violence and the media's role in covering it, strives to remind us of that. The exhibit - which runs until Nov. 19 at the Fourth Wall Project, 132 Brookline Ave., in Boston - allows families of homicide victims to tell the story of their lives via photographs and other personal artifacts. The powerful presentation of lives cut short runs up against the all-too-common public perception of who is dying on inner city...

Nicholas Nixon first came to public prominence 35 years ago. He was one of 10 photographers in what would come to be seen as a landmark exhibition. “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape’’ looked at the interaction of settlement and environment. It was nature photography that encompassed both the man-made and natural. The Boston cityscapes that Nixon had in that show seem very far, except geographically, from the 75 black-and-white images in “Nicholas Nixon: Family Album,’’ which runs through next May 1 at the Museum of Fine Arts.

PEOPLE ARE more than the circumstances surrounding their death. They are the sum of their life and every life counts. "Anonymous Boston," an exhibit that addresses urban violence and the media's role in covering it, strives to remind us of that. The exhibit - which runs until Nov. 19 at the Fourth Wall Project, 132 Brookline Ave., in Boston - allows families of homicide victims to tell the story of their lives via photographs and other personal artifacts. The powerful presentation of lives cut short runs up against the all-too-common public perception of who is...

PORTLAND, Maine - More than a century separates the photographs of Julia Margaret Cameron from those of Joyce Tenneson. Yet their affinity is plain. Both present feminine beauty as something ethereal and spiritual. Both traffic in allegory and an air of otherworldliness. Both try, in a sense, to visualize the eternal. There the similarity ends. Cameron’s work is quintessentially Victorian. Indeed, her images not only reflect the sensibility of her era, they helped shape it. Tenneson’s images, which she took between 1986 and 2004, seem as contemporary - and...

SAN DIEGO -- Frances Schreuder, a Manhattan socialite who was convicted of persuading her son to murder her father in a case that was made into two books and two television miniseries, died Tuesday, her sister said. She was 65. The cause of death was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, said her sister, Marilyn Reagan. Ms. Schreuder, who sat on the board of the New York City Ballet, was largely supported by her wealthy father, Franklin Bradshaw. She allegedly began scheming to kill him because she thought she might be disinherited, hatching at least...

BENNINGTON, Vt. - Senses specialize, or at least they seem to when it comes to space and time. Sound can have an uncanny ability to collapse duration. Think, for example, of what happens when you hear a pop song you haven’t listened to for many years. Smell has a similar capacity to induce time travel. So does taste, a subject about which Marcel Proust had something to say. In contrast, sight locates us spatially. Our eyes are what put us, quite literally, in our place. This relationship between vision and location underlies “The Quality of Place: Photography, Space and Specificity,’’...

GLOUCESTER -- What a difference a decade makes. When I first saw Wendy Wasserstein's most acclaimed play, "The Heidi Chronicles," in the early 1990s, it struck me as a facile series of snapshots. It still feels like snapshots, but now they're like the ones in a treasured family album. I honestly don't know if the play has changed with the passage of time, or I have. No doubt it's both -- and no doubt Heidi Holland would know just how I feel. Heidi is, of course, the smart, anxious art historian who's in every snapshot, from the '60s mixer through the '70s women's...

Nicholas Nixon first came to public prominence 35 years ago. He was one of 10 photographers in what would come to be seen as a landmark exhibition. “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape’’ looked at the interaction of settlement and environment. It was nature photography that encompassed both the man-made and natural. The Boston cityscapes that Nixon had in that show seem very far, except geographically, from the 75 black-and-white images in “Nicholas Nixon: Family Album,’’ which runs through next May 1 at the Museum of Fine Arts.

There’s something hypnotic about family stories, especially when the members of the clan seem to be both successful and also hiding very dark secrets. That’s the hook at the heart of British author Penelope Lively’s “Family Album,’’ and it is one that carries the reader a good way. Set during a reunion at a sprawling family homestead called Allersmead, this detailed work - Lively’s 16th novel - offers a delicious taste of such lives, but in a form that is ultimately too disconnected to satisfy.

PORTLAND, Maine - More than a century separates the photographs of Julia Margaret Cameron from those of Joyce Tenneson. Yet their affinity is plain. Both present feminine beauty as something ethereal and spiritual. Both traffic in allegory and an air of otherworldliness. Both try, in a sense, to visualize the eternal. There the similarity ends. Cameron’s work is quintessentially Victorian. Indeed, her images not only reflect the sensibility of her era, they helped shape it. Tenneson’s images, which she took between 1986 and 2004, seem as contemporary - and substantial...

"Elvis by the Presleys" is a clip job, but what clips! The two-hour documentary, which airs tonight at 8 on Channel 4, is the final part of CBS's sweeps week of Elvis programming, following its biopic miniseries "Elvis. " And of the two products, it's the more intimate and affecting one, as it brings us abundant footage of Presley with his family, along with frank commentary from Priscilla Beaulieu Presley, her parents, Elvis's cousin Patsy, and daughter Lisa Marie. It's a sweet family album of a show, but with enough hard truth about the man who died at 42 to give it authenticity.