Name: My Death
Rating: 3.875 (4 reviews)
ISBN: 9781933500232

Lisa Tuttle

L. Timmel Duchamp

A Novella

My Death

The November 2023 selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club The narrator of Lisa Tuttle’s uncanny novella is a recent widow, a writer adrift. Not only has she lost her husband but her muse seems to have deserted her altogether. Her agent summons her to Edinburgh to discuss her next book. What will she tell him? At once the answer comes to her: she will write the biography of Helen Ralston, best known, if at all, as the subject of W.E. Logan’s much-reproduced painting Circe, and the inspiration for his classic children’s book, Hermine in Cloud-Land. But Ralston was a novelist and artist in her own right, though her writing is no longer in print and her most radical painting, My Death, deemed too unsettling—malevolent even—to be shown in public. Over the months that follow, Ralston proves an astonishingly cooperative subject, even as her biographer uncovers eerie resonances between the older woman’s history and her own. Whose biography is she writing—really?

The narrator of 'My Death' is living in isolation after the death of her husband. She meets with her agent to discuss a book proposal. She arrives in Edinburgh and takes the time to visit a museum. A painting by W.E. Logan, Circe, inspires her to write a biography of the model for the painting, Helen Ralston.

stunning novella!! how have a never read this author before omg

Grace M

Ada Lu

Regan Martin

I really liked the book's message about how often female creators and artists had to step back behind male contemporaries over the course of history, being reduced to “muses”, and how the cycle will always repeat itself if women don’t have the courage to step out of the men’s shadow.

The novel’s ending, however, felt a bit rushed compared to the sparse moments of foreshadowing.

Nezumi

I really liked the book's message about how often female creators and artists had to step back behind male contemporaries over the course of history, being reduced to “muses”, and how the cycle will always repeat itself if women don’t have the courage to step out of the men’s shadow.

The novel’s ending, however, felt a bit rushed compared to the sparse moments of foreshadowing.

My Death A Novella

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