The Last Photograph
He walks into the living room and June is dead.
He centres her, checking the light. Focusing, he clicks the shutter.
He’ll ask himself later, if he knew. It’s easy to say that he had acted without thinking, out of instinct.
Rook Henderson is an award-winning photographer, still carrying the hidden scars of war. Now, suddenly, he is also a widower. Leaving his son Ralph to pick up the pieces, Rook flies to Vietnam for the first time in fifty years, escaping to the landscape of a place he once knew so well.
But when Ralph follows him out there, seeking answers from the father he barely knows, Rook is forced to unwind his past: his childhood in Yorkshire, his life in London in the 1960s and his marriage to the unforgettable June – and to ask himself what price he has paid for a life behind the lens…
Gripping, evocative and unforgettable, The Last Photograph is a story of a life shaped by trauma and love – and the secrets that make us who we are.
"The Last Photograph is a novel of the highest calibre - absorbing, moving, and acutely insightful." - Lottie Moggach, author of KISS ME FIRST
"Chapman...has an enviable lightness of touch and tackles the big subjects of love and war with aplomb." - Sebastian Shakespeare, Tatler
"Elegant...Successful in its thoughtful depiction of ageing, memory and time, [and] the hold the past has over us" - The Observer
"Chapman has a taut, economical style that proves immersive." - The Sunday Times
"Chapman’s book captures the obsessive thrill of photography but also points to a beckoning world beyond the limited framing of the viewfinder" - The Australian
"[The Last Photograph's] guilt-ridden hero is hugely sympathetic" - Mail on Sunday
"Chapman's book follows a war photographer, and gets under the skin of a character more at home in the pursuit of professional action than in his normal life...The knack of evoking time and place without wearing research too heavily or earnestly is something for other writers to aspire to." - The Metro
"No second-book wobbles for Emma Chapman, who has achieved something admirable with The Last Photograph. Starting with a death, the narrative weaves past and present against a backdrop of the Vietnam war and London in the 60s. Two conflicting worlds, writ large within the soul of our protagonist. Authentic and compelling, this is a novel that delivers as a piece of art can, revealing itself in reflection and leaving a lasting impression." - Ruth Dugdall, author of THE WOMAN BEFORE ME