Though book is slim, the story is complex, subtle and knowing

By CHARLES MATTHEWS
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
"The Photograph," by Penelope Lively (Viking, $24.95)
Rummaging through a cabinet, a man comes across an envelope labeled "DON'T OPEN -- DESTROY." If you know anything about human nature, you know this: Nobody can resist opening that envelope.
And who can resist reading a novel that begins with the man and the envelope? The novel is "The Photograph" (Viking, 231 pp., $24.95), by Penelope Lively. Glyn Peters has found the envelope among some papers belonging to his dead wife, Kath. It contains (you guessed it) a photograph. And by opening the envelope and looking at the picture, Glyn discovers that Kath had an affair with Nick Hammond, who is married to Kath's sister, Elaine.
It's such a good beginning that the rest of the book comes close to being anticlimactic. But Lively, who won the Booker Prize for "Moon Tiger" and has written a score of other books, keeps the narrative in delicate suspension, as the circles of consequence ripple out from Glyn's discovery.
"The Photograph" is a slim book, but it's more subtle, complex and knowing than some of the doorstop epics that pass for serious novels these days.