STARRED Book Review: We Never Took a Bad Picture

Reviewed by Peggy Kurkowski | Content warnings: death of a teenage child

Infidelity, broken promises, and unspeakable tragedy—a fifty-fifth anniversary party is the catalyst of one family’s final reckoning. 

Sifting through old family photos in 2018, Gloria Joyce plans a glittering anniversary party to celebrate her and Artie’s fifty-five years of marriage, but under the surface of smiling faces and official poses, a deafening silence lingers. In We Never Took a Bad Picture, Ashley Roth crafts a spellbinding and authentic story of imperfect love, frail faithfulness, and parental regrets. 

In 1959 California, teenagers Artie Joyce and Gloria Accetta have a chance meeting outside her best friend Denise’s house. Artie is handsome with a resemblance to Elvis Presley, and Gloria’s big brown eyes capture his attention and give him the courage to confront his abusive father. 

They eventually marry and have a daughter, Autumn, followed later by a son, Teddy. But in between these sweet moments are years of scarring: Artie’s serial infidelity and alcoholism, Autumn’s metastasizing rebellions, and Teddy’s untimely and shocking death. 

With alternating timelines, the story of the Joyces comes into full, excruciating view. In present day, Artie relies on his structured, pleasant life as a manager at a small, local grocery store to balance out the chaos of a life spent carousing and drinking, mimicking the very actions of his hated father. Gloria, meanwhile, is cheered by the return of Denise and her husband Bill from abroad. 

Memories lap against the Joyces’ carefully constructed façade with increasing power, as Gloria sifts through silent mounds of photographs for the party. As the tragedies of the past are met with newer ones, Gloria realizes “they had deceived reality with their perfect photo albums…knowing how to smile and pose for each captured moment, knowing how to fool the future generations who would muse over how in love they must have been.”

As the party date nears, as does Artie’s unwilling retirement from the grocery store, an ineluctable sense of dread permeates the narrative—especially when Gloria decides to break her thirty-year pact with Artie by pulling out photos of Teddy. This was their devil’s bargain, and Artie’s way to deal with his death at sixteen…erasing the pictorial record from their home, their glasslike mirage of a marriage. 

Building around these realities spanning decades, Roth’s novel is a lyrical examination of all the things photos leave out: strained relationships, broken trust, bad choices, and their ineffable consequences. The narrative’s objectivity to both parties in the Joyce marriage is refreshing, as Roth takes a keen interest in all her characters, even the ones who cause the most harm…like Artie. But what of his feelings as a husband and father? 

“He wasn’t a person to them. He wasn’t the child with the skinned knee. He was the man of the house. The person who climbed ladders and fixed appliances that wouldn’t turn on. He was Dad.”

The anniversary party presents the hope of redemption for each character: will Artie finally break his addiction to alcohol and embrace retirement? Will Autumn and her estranged daughter, Veronica, build a relationship? Will Gloria finally find the peace she has sought all her life? Make no mistake…the pages almost turn themselves. 

We Never Took a Bad Picture is a sublime soliloquy on love, marriage, and parenthood…a literary tour de force that excavates the human heart with careful precision and sensitivity. Do not miss this one.

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