Showing results for "A Still Life" in Literary Fiction

Everything in Edith’s life is approaching disaster. Her writing career is stagnant. Her love life is a mess. Her ex, Tessa, is marrying a man. Her teeth are rotting in her skull. And her best friend, Val, is dead. Still Life volleys between the present and recent past, chronicling the lives of three women—one cis, two trans, all forever entwined.

After the death of her art dealer father, 40-year-old Gaby Greenwood's unmoored grief drives her to Paris alone, leaving her American husband behind. Where better for an existential crisis than the city so many artists have loved? Walking through the streets, she sees a man with white hair and a worn corduroy jacket - a dead ringer for her late father. A ghost? Or has mourning driven her mad?

Still Life with Bread Crumbs begins with an imagined gunshot and ends with a new tin roof. Between the two is a wry and knowing portrait of Rebecca Winter, a photographer whose work made her an unlikely heroine for many women. Her career is now descendent, her bank balance shaky, and she has fled the city for the middle of nowhere. There she discovers, in a tree stand with a roofer named Jim Bates, that what she sees through a camera lens is not all there is to life.

Until John Wilson met the warm, wise woman who became his fourth wife, the object of his most intense devotion had always been the work of William Shakespeare. From his feat of memorizing Romeo and Juliet and half a dozen other plays as a student to his evangelical zeal as a professor, John's faith in the Bard has shaped his life. But now his mental powers have been diminished by dementia, and his wife has reluctantly moved him to a residential care facility.

Inspired by the novels of D.H. Lawrence, particularly The Rainbow and Women in Love, this ambitious quartet from Booker Prize-winning novelist A.S. Byatt charts the lives of the Potter family between 1953 and 1970. Set against the changing social and political landscape of England in the '50s and '60s, it follows the heroine, Frederica, from precocious teenager to TV talk-show host and from her Yorkshire home to the heart of swinging London.

In this keenly observant dissection of a love affair in limbo, award-winning author Inês Pedrosa masterfully draws readers into the feverish, unsparing dual confessions of a man and a woman who are finally baring their hearts, souls, fury, and grief over a relationship that was abruptly shattered and never forgotten. Until now, there was so much between them left unspoken. With each new unguarded, darkly funny, and emotional disclosure, they’re brought back together—though impossibly so.

In this robust, elegantly plotted, and ultimately life-affirming novel, Zoe Whittall presents a dazzling portrait of the Millennial Generation - the 25-year-olds who grew up on anti-anxiety meds, text-messaging each other truncated emotional reactions, unsure of what's public and what's private. Holding Still explores an unusual love triangle involving Billy, a former teen idol, now an anxiety-ridden agoraphobic; Josh, a shy transgendered paramedic who travels the city patching up damaged bodies; and Amy, a fashionable filmmaker coping with her first broken heart.

Minou Blancart erhält kurz vor ihrer Abreise nach Süd-Frankreich ein Bündel Briefe ihrer verstorbenen Schwester Lilly und eine Eintrittskarte zur Gemäldeausstellung Les Aimants im Pariser Musée dʼOrsay. Lillys Zeilen führen Minou in die schicksalsreiche Vergangenheit ihrer Schwester und zu einem flirrenden Sommer mit Monsieur Inconnu... Nachdem Minou die Briefe gelesen hat, ist für sie nichts mehr wie vorher. Sie steht vor einer schwierigen Entscheidung. Nun ist sie es, die einen Brief schreibt und ihn unter einem Stein auf Lillys Grab legt.