Reviews

This second novel in the Frederica Quartet takes us from the summer before Frederica starts college, when she serves as an au pair in Southern France, through her time at Cambridge. Frederica explores

her sexuality, acts the lead role in a disaster of a play, and falls in love with a reclusive poet/ scholar.

She also meets Nigel. Many of the characters whom she befriends at Cambridge show back up in bit parts in Babel Tower.

Marcus also makes friends, Jacqueline and Ruth, who will show up in Babel Tower, and returns to his studies, approximating some sense of normality.

Daniel and Stephanie have two children, William (Will) and Mary.

Stephanie dies.

Alexander

has another affair with a married woman, because of course he does. This time it's the wife of his friend, Thomas Poole.

He also writes another play, The Yellow Chair, about Vincent Van Gogh. We see a production of it toward the end of the novel.

In addition to these things, Still Life is interested in verbal still lifes, both of paintings--particularly Van Gogh--and in terms of extremely detailed description. Byatt's narrator draws attention to these considerations: the relationship between images and the things themselves, between words and the things themselves.

"It is impossible not to think about the distance between paint and things, between paint and the 'real world' (which includes other paintings.
It is not at all impossible, it is even common, not to think about the distance between words and things, between words and life, between words and reality....We know paint is not plum flesh. We do not know with the same certainty that our language does not simply, mimetically, coincide with our world" (178).

"Language, he said, had once been thought of as Adamic naming; words had been thought of as somehow part of the thing they named, the word rose flowering on the rose as the rose flowered on the stem. Then later--he gave examples, a near and brilliant history of words unfitting themselves from objects--men had become more self-conscious about language, had seen it as an artifact, torn loose from the world, a web we wove to cover things we could only partially evoke or suggest. And metaphor, our perception of likeness, which seemed like understanding, could be simply a network of our attempted sense making" (218).

In her essay, "Still Life/ nature morte," Byatt states that in writing Still Life, "I found myself writing into my text 'taxonomies'--from one girl's study of all young men in Cambridge, to a formicary and an essay in field grasses, from children's pictures representing alphabets to a long discursus on a child's pre-speech."

From a conversation between Alexander and Wijnnobel (who also reappears in Babel Tower, on the grammar committee):

"In Freud's vision things secretly resent the calling to life of light. They wish to return to the state in which they were--instincts are conservative, 'every organism wishes to die only after its own fashion.' Maybe we could see our fascination for still life--or nature morte--in these terms? Maybe the kind of lifeless life of things bathed in light is another version of the golden age--an impossible stasis, a world without desire and division?" (192).

batbones's review

Go to review page

5.0

Art, plays, pretences, mapping life to stage; and language--gripping, holding, slipping and losing. Contemplating whether there is fear in knowing this, or what anxieties the age has realised and elicited. Vincent van Gogh, no longer poignant or melancholy, but in searing colour. Giddy glory and promise and deprivation. The feeling of life being full and yet also slipping away. To snatch and examine and dissect a mysterious word like love, or people, or sex. To decide whether literature knows about life accurately enough that it is a virtue/help to read life through it, or use it as a compass. Madness, or a different kind of vision. (Of whose bearer I am surprised to be fond.) Light and geometry and the precise curves and patterns of plants; the harmony of lines and repetitions suggesting something secure, a hand behind the screen, a mind for a generation with chaos and Freud on their lips. What do we do with ourselves? What have we done? Sudden death. Then, mourning mourning mourning. Discourse and words like nets with which emotion is borne and yet also escapes.

rhiannoncs's review

Go to review page

4.0

Not quite as strong as [b:The Virgin in the Garden|86888|The Virgin in the Garden|A.S. Byatt|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320497161s/86888.jpg|245459], but not-quite-as-strong Byatt still outranks most authors at full strength, in my book. Stephanie's storyline was the most compelling for me, as she searches for her sense of self after leaving a world of letters for the role of mother and clergy wife. Alexander seems to be included mostly for thematic purposes, at this point - the comparative ease with which he is able to pursue his art and compartmentalize his personal life is striking. Frederica's sexual and intellectual pursuits at Cambridge were diverting, but I wish there were more growth of her character in this book. The ending definitely sets the stage for that in the next book, however.

nle2004's review

Go to review page

5.0

It was a wonderful journey through excellent language and multilayered narration. In the beginning I saw the characters rather like prompts for an exploration of objects and how they influence people's life, language being the main issue. But as the story developed, I got used to every character, started feeling empathy and fell in love with a few.
I admire the beauty of this novel and wish it lasted a bit longer. When I tapped the next page on my Kindle and saw that the book had come to the end, I could hardly believe it was over.
I'm so happy that I read it slowly, going back and re-reading some pages, yet I'm sure I've missed a substantial part of what Mrs Byatt had put in her novel. I'm sure that when I read it next time (I definitely will), I'll get even more pleasure and will discover new issues she wanted her readers to think over.

ithaka2022's review

Go to review page

5.0

Половину книги я читала с прошлого года, а вторую половину - один день.

libkatem's review against another edition

Go to review page

3.0

For the record, I love A.S. Byatt. And I'm a firm believer of reading several books by the same author to get a feel for their style.

I was hoping that if I read this book soon after "The Virgin in the Garden" it would go better. But it didn't. While I felt slightly more invested in the characters, there was nothing that made me need to turn the page. I don't really like Frederica. She's just... I don't know what it is, but I can't bring myself to like her.

And this needs to be said. I hate it in books when the author makes direct observations to the reader. It's a habit of Victorian authors and Byatt makes use of it here. I prefer to suspend reality and pretend that these characters are real. When the author makes the observation (rule 1 - show, don't tell!) it knocks me out of the story.

It's part two of a quartet, and maybe I'll read the others someday, but I think I'll be reading other Byatt books.

More...