A. S. Byatt

Frederica Potter arrives at Cambridge University greedy for knowledge, sex and love. It isn't long before she becomes infatuated with a mysterious and controlling poet. Back in Yorkshire, her sister Stephanie abandons academia and is confronted with the boredom and frustrations of motherhood. Meanwhile, their younger brother Marcus begins to recover from a nervous breakdown. Each sibling is desperate to shape their own future, but a horrifying event will soon change their lives forever.

Still Life

A.S. Byatt

From the author of The New York Times bestseller Possession, comes a highly acclaimed novel which captures in brilliant detail the life of one extended English family--and illuminates the choices they must make between domesticity and ambition, life and art. Toni Morrison, author of Beloved, writes of Byatt: "When it comes to probing characters her scalpel is sure but gentle. She is a loving surgeon".

Emmett

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.

Still Life

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