Still Life

by Katherine Packert Burke

A profound and piercing tribute to messy webs of queer friendship and to what is left behind in transition.

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. Edith was a bumbling college “boy,” pre-transition, in love with Tessa, enamored by Val, and drowning in Boston. She and Tessa called each other Joni and Joan, an homage to fledgling adulthood’s musical backdrop. Now, Edith is wracked with guilt over Val. A sometimes-lover, trans mentor, purveyor of estrogen pills and wisdom from a life on the fringe, Val was everything Tessa wasn’t and everything Edith needed. Was Valerie's fatal car crash Edith's fault? Would she have stayed put if Edith had loved her better?

Infused with pop culture, cigarettes, and Sondheim, Katherine Packert Burke traces the lives of three women, trans and cis, here and gone, to craft a tableau of modern womanhood.

Genres: Queer, Fiction, Transgender, LGBT, Contemporary, Adult, Literary Fiction

272 pages, Hardcover

First published September 10, 2024

Reviews

[liv ❁ · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve started losing patience for the sad girl narrators who are stuck wallowing in their own misery, unable to look anywhere but at the past, and that’s probably in part because I’ve started losing patience for myself in that regard too, which is kind of sad because I am no longer enjoying these sad girl books, but maybe it’s also happy because it makes me want to push myself out of my wallowing.

[jocelyn • coolgalreading · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was so beautiful 🥺

[Jessica Woodbury · Rating 3 out of 5]

The meandering, searching for meaning and identity 20-something novel through a trans lens. Edith's return to Boston, to the place she was closest to happy before her transition, is the emotional center of the novel and has much of its strengths. The "you can never go home again" story when the closest place to home knows you as a different person is fitting. Edith's version is different but also the same.

The two pillars of Edith's identity are her two ex-girlfriends, and we jump around in time to her previous relationships with them. She was with Tessa before she transitioned, and since Tessa never dated men she never felt stable in the relationship. Searching for some kind of closure, Edith finds only more instability, that once again Tessa's definition of herself has changed.

Then there is Val, whose death Edith is constantly mourning. Val was Edith's model and mentor of trans womanhood, though Edith mostly pines after Val as an ideal lover. Val was absolutely not an ideal lover, as we come to see, and Edith's romanticization is an attempt to rewrite the past. To me Val often fell flat on the page, more mystery than person, one of the novel's major drawbacks even though I'm sure it's intentional. It's always risky to have this kind of character who refuses to stay in one place, who refuses to be defined.

Edith's past has never been exactly what she wants but she feels like she must find some kind of home to go back to, rather than building the home she wants. This slow transition and understanding is the defining arc of the book.

More vibes than plot, dialogue without quotation marks and moving around in time so you don't always realize exactly where and when you are. Being in Edith's head is a lot of sadness and self-pity, as she works through everything. Although the cuts to Sondheim lyrics as touchpoints for understanding were very enjoyable for me.

Even if this novel isn't fully cohesive, it's affecting and honest, I cared very much about Edith even if I also wanted her to figure out what was right in front of her. I would like to see what she does next.

[Eden Gatsby · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to love this but I just ended up completely struggling through it, mostly lost, kind of bored, kind of confused. Conversations seemed to completely change directions mid way through to the point where I thought I'd accidentally skipped a page. Context was rarely given and things would just, happen? Without build up, without explanation. Again, I would feel like I had missed a page or something had been cut out because things would be happening so out of the blue. None of the characters were likeable, they were all either whiny, mean, irritating or annoying. The time jumps had no rhyme or reason to them, it felt like there was no order to anything, scenes were just plopped in wherever the author felt like it. Something I thought would be a big plot point - returning to Boston and seeing her ex - ended up feeling so small and like a non-event. No major reactions were had over events that should cause a major reaction. I couldn't be bothered reading through the summaries of musicals or movies or tv shows that were inserted at random points in the book. There was probably a reason but I couldn't find it? What I can say is that the characters did feel quite real, if unlikeable. Some of Edith's experiences came across as genuine, relatable and vulnerable. Again, I really wanted to love this but I just found SO many problems and couldn't find the point to it all.

[Liam Whitworth · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW. Insanely smart, extremely tender, and sharply observed. Disappointing that no editor took this book seriously enough to guide it into its best possible form. That lack of editorial rigor is a disservice that transsexual artists face far too often. What could have been a perfect book is marred by extraneous phrases, a boring musical theater side quest that doesn't add anything to her broader point, and explain-y lines that distract from Burke’s otherwise genius observations on artmaking.
A saga on how not to navigate nihilism, post-woke friendships, absence, cyclical spirally mental illness. Edith’s interior life is rendered with tangible sweetness and longing. All that said: the book is horribly overloaded with pop culture references. Dialogue is inconsistent, at times flat or clichéd, at other times brilliant, crazy original, laugh out loud funny. The unevenness is frustrating because you can feel such huge potential here. Respect means offering us the same time and careful editing that any non-trans writer would receive. Norton, the publisher, dropped the ball here.

[McKenzie Millican · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s difficult to pass impartial judgement on autobiographical theater. If a playwright has written a play about their own life, then I have to assume the directors and producers and editors and agents in sure have a hard time saying “oh sorry this scene doesn’t quite work” when it’s a scene that the author literally experienced in their very own life. “Oh this dialogue sounds weird” okay well someone actually said it. Autofiction is the same slippery beast. If it’s you, your literal life, how can someone apply the same editorial lens as a piece of purer fiction? Katherine Packert Burke’s debut is a tangly fun read about an interwoven group of friends reckoning with their pasts/life changes/general messiness. The feelings were raw, the writing was lovely, the characters were authentically frustrating and endearing. However, I do wish a more heavy handed editor had chopped away at this debut a bit more. Did all dialogue need to be in italics? For what purposes? It seemed like a style-for-style’s-sake choice. Did we need to know every song and artist the main character was listening to? What do we gain from that? It may be /accurate/, but was it necessary? I love Sondheim, but did we need plot summaries of so many of his shows? Chop chop chop! Burke’s voice shines brightest in dialogue, conversations between friends, digging deep into the minds of her characters. I will be excited to read more of her fiction. Her Twitter is very funny. I do love that the book is exactly 272 pages long, as all good books are. For fans of Idlewild (not just because Thomas blurbed this book), reading Maggie Nelson and weeping, having a personal identity crisis because of the evolving identities of people from your past, Greta & Valdin by Rebecca Reilly, and owning (and actually reading) the Finishing the Hat box set.

Thank you to Norton and Netgalley for the ARC!

[lyraand]

(This review is based on an advanced reader’s copy provided by Edelweiss.)

Did she really think she could slut her way to self-knowledge? It could only complicate their friendship. But were they friends, or were they just both trans?

This definitely has its moments, both serious and funny, but overall I found it underwhelming (2.5 stars, maybe). There’s a good book in there somewhere, after another few rounds of revisions, but this version isn’t it. The main character is a novelist whose first book is about the Roman Empire and trans astronauts, and I wish I could read that book instead.

Not much happens in this book, which I’m fine with in theory: I’m a character-driven reader and don’t care about the plot if I love spending time with the characters. And this book seems to be trying to be a character-driven book, but in fact I never got a very strong sense of who the characters are. I’d have a hard time describing Edith’s personality, other than…she doesn’t know what she wants? And I have an even harder time describing Tessa’s. None of the characters felt real to me.

There are a lot of long descriptions of the plots of various movies, TV shows, musicals, etc. I’m not opposed to pop culture references in novels, but they’re not used very effectively in this case.

The narrative voice feels a little wobbly, occasionally awkward and over-written. Don’t get me wrong, I like litfic, and I like having to occasionally look up obscure words. But the prose here feels affected and pretentious for no reason; for example, Edith is described as having a “mouthful of gluten and salt” (it’s a bagel), and someone eats “bituminous chunks of biscuit.”

I also just have a personal preference for a close third person, and this one is more of a distant third person.

[Natalie Marlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the more lucid novels I've read on how transness and geographic restlessness/dissociation intertwine to create a form of temporal uncanniness—your past lives finding unexpected echoes from revisiting a place tied to pre-transition life, or sensing the recursive shadow of something said to you thousands of miles away by someone you loved who is no longer in your life. A past life so distinct and cordoned off from your current reality, something so alien to you, and yet still strangely something you can never fully shake. Yet we roll along regardless, no matter how borne back into past we become. Similarly quite taken by how shrewd and complex this is about processing life via art—the pitfalls of trying to understand the very real people whose complex internal lives you inherently will never have a complete sense of and trying to reduce them down to words on a page. Really tremendous book.

[naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

i often get sick of the sad-girl-wallowing-in-her-sadness narrative, but this felt more refreshed. both a self-aware critique of autofiction and a story about queer people simply existing. and also feels like Sondheim’s “Company”, if it were gay :)

[Clara Remon · Rating 4 out of 5]

the writing went over my head sometimes and the timeline was confusing but I will always wholeheartedly support a lonely queer girl narrator trying to dissect life & heartbreak through her books

[c.s. inez. · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Review of Advance Reading Copy, made possible by WWNorton) - Still Life is both a quintessential read and a horror to those in queer friend groups in college towns. It makes you feel seen in the most horrible and profound ways. Katherine Packer Burke reaches into the minds of her readers and her own soul (as I believe this is potentially a work of autofiction?) to produce characters that feel real and relatable and utterly infuriating. The use of time in this novel makes the human life feel thrilling - we know as the reader about where the book will end, but you are gripped the entire ride. As someone who has known they were queer from a young age and has made many friends along the way (either on their own journey of self-discovery or not a part of the lgbtqia+ community) this is a story that rings so true to so many. I often had to put Still Life down and sit with my own thoughts, recollecting conversations that I have had that mirrored those Edith was having in the book. A truly masterful book that I am sure is going to become a classic of queer literature. Can't wait for its publication!

[Brice Montgomery · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley and W.W. Norton & Company for the ARC!

Katherine Packert Burke’s Still Life is a solid debut novel with ambitions that occasionally feel lost amidst other narrative distractions.

Still Life is the story of a trans woman—Edith—trying to unify her life’s “before” and “after”—the years pre- and post-transition. Her pre-transition life is filled with friendships, romances, and formative moments, but how does one honor what was intentionally left behind? How do those feelings, relationships, and events change when they’ve been re-mediated through a changed body?

There are incredible moments where the instability of identity compounds the already-difficult realities of relationship—scenes in which we see the impossibility of tidy emotional categorization. Thematically this suggests an interesting exploration of the latent ambiguities of found-family intimacy, especially the permeable borders between platonic and romantic love. One can’t help but applaud Burke’s ability and willingness to sustain this tension across the entirety of the book.

The question, however, is whether this tension can sustain the entirety of a book.

I’m not so sure.

All the shared histories and inside jokes feel real, but unfortunately so—they ring as factual but untrue, the kind of anecdotes that would be met with blank, disinterested stares if you told them to acquaintances. They seem excised from an actual life and clumsily grafted in here, and it leads to many uncomfortable moments in which the reader wonders if Burke is simply including details from her own life to fill out the story.

Similarly, Still Life isn’t a long book, but it overstays its welcome by a good hundred pages, largely due to how often Burke diverts her attention from emotional complexity and devotes it to the self-absorbed petulance of academia. Much of the book waxes intellectual in a way that would feel meaningful in a graduate seminar, but it’s absurd, esoteric, and self-indulgent in any other medium. I suspect that readers’ enjoyment will depend on whether academia is a shared experience—it’s so estranging otherwise, and I say that as someone who loved my graduate seminars. Each time I found myself excited by mention of, say, a literary theorist, it also felt like an obvious detriment to the narrative.

Ultimately, I’m not sure how much these critiques matter because Burke’s prose is excellent. Even when the story seems to be fraying at its seams, it’s held together by her truly remarkable descriptive language. There are moments that are so emotionally specific or visually singular that I found myself re-reading them—flirtations with poetry. This is an author who knows the strengths of her voice; she just might need a little more time refining them.

Still Life never quite works on its own merits, but it does feel like a preview of an exciting literary career. Katherine Packert Burke’s meticulous attention to every word is magnetic, and I look forward to seeing what she does next.

[Genesee Rickel]

"In her sharp, funny and wonderfully observed debut, Katherine Packert Burke captures the ordinary texture of queer and trans life. Still Life is a surprising and layered portrayal of the quotidian, full of biting musings on queer and trans culture, literature, art and, quite poignantly, Sondheim musicals.

Edith is a trans woman in her late 20s, muddling through life without direction. She’s living in Austin, supposedly working on her second book. In reality, she spends her days cruising dating apps, going to parties and attending protests against increasingly violent anti-trans legislation. Grieving the death of her best friend and sometimes-lover, Val, she’s trapped in a melancholic longing for her past in Boston.

When a college friend invites her to speak to his creative writing students, she reluctantly returns to Boston for a week, where she visits her ex-girlfriend, Tessa, whom she dated before she transitioned. The narrative moves between the turbulent present and the turbulent past. In both timelines, Edith’s life revolves around her tangled relationships with both Tessa and Val. The three women’s friendships shift as they age, move and fall in and out of love. Edith transitions and comes out; Val dies. It is these two world-remaking changes that give the novel its emotional heft.

There’s not much plot in these 272 pages, but the novel is all the richer for it. Without external events driving the action forward, Burke is able to focus on the strange and singular details of her protagonist’s interior life. Burke writes about grief, transition, gender identity, desire, and queer and trans love with astonishing expansiveness. Edith’s journey is not straightforward or linear. It’s circuitous, sometimes stagnant. She tries to think her way forward, but finds, again and again, that she cannot escape the material world—her physical body.

Still Life is an ode to both the sweet and thorny parts of queer friendship. Its urgency lies not in what happens to the characters, but in how they feel about what happens to them. Most of all, it’s a novel about navigating that most human of conundrums: change."

- BookPage review by Laura Sackton https://www.bookpage.com/reviews/stil...

"Still Life has lovely and endlessly quotable writing, lived-in characters and a sense of humor. But it lacks tension, which could spring from multiple sources — from Edith’s desire to get back together with Tessa, or from her quest to overcome grief and guilt over Val’s death. But like Edith, the novel is aimless and uncertain." - Excerpt from The New York Times book review by Angela Lashbrook

[Cían · Rating 3 out of 5]

Still Life was a very solid debut novel and I loved the idea of it. Contemporary adult fiction work with trans characters is such a rarity, and it was incredibly refreshing to see such a raw and honest depiction of the confusing mess that gender and sexual exploration can become. It was really valuable to read a novel that reflected much of my own experience, particularly from a trans author who is doing justice to our collective experience.

Something that Packert Burke hit on quite successfully, in my opinion, is the way that gender and sexuality act as pillars for our own sense of self. It's an incredibly common queer and trans experience to feel completely fractured or fragmented in who you are as you struggle through that questioning, and those feelings in both Edith and Tessa felt very genuine. Additionally, these feelings are also happening in the context of a much larger collective existential meaninglessness among the current young adult generation (millennials through gen Z) and the endless pursuit of some sliver of meaning in friendships, love, and self-actualization. Packert Burke describes these experiences with prose that feels as intimate as a journal entry, but simultaneously as profound as the classics in many respects.

All that being said, Still Life fell short for me in a few different ways. The narration focuses predominantly on Edith, but also heavily features Tessa and Valerie, the other two women in their queer femme triad. I didn't feel like all three characters were fully fleshed out enough, and I think they got in the way of each other at times and felt hollow. I can understand Packert Burke's intention to have the characters overlap with each other, indicating how they reflect each other's queerness and femininity in the context of their constructed womanhood, but it got to the point of confusion at times and I didn't feel I had a solid grasp of each character as a separate person. I felt similarly regarding the timeline of the novel, along with some of the motifs that were introduced but then disappeared (Edith's toothache?) and the continual references to external media that seemed to obfuscate the characters' development.

Ultimately, this is a novel that makes me excited about Packert Burke's future as a writer. With more experience and heavy editing, I can see the successor to Still Life as truly great.

[lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly it was a struggle to give this two stars. In the end it wasn't as terrible as I thought it would be in the beginning. This story (it was autofiction, maybe?) is about Edith who is living in Texas, where the future is proving grim for trans people, who is still obsessing over her exes, Tessa and Val, and the holes they have left in her life. The story starts with Edith visiting her old life and old friends in Boston before shifting back to her life in Texas, and how she simply isn't happy in either place, and is therefore afraid she won't be happy anywhere. She is mourning the sudden death of Val, and the sudden news of Tessa's marriage to a man after years of Tessa proclaiming she is into women only. This book is filled with angst and restlessness, and constant evaluating relationships and desire. I can appreciate how complicated it all was, and how the story comes together despite it all, and if I was in my twenties, I might have really really liked this. However, I got tired of the endless questions, and the constant summaries of Into the Woods and Gossip Girl. There is a very good reason I am not into either of these things, and it's because I find them so insanely boring that I can't fathom even thinking about them. I also liked that queer people feature very prominently in this story, and although there are a few straight people, they are mostly vague pieces in the background, ultimately serving to the story of the queers. It was refreshing to read a story purely about queer people hanging out with other queer people, thinking about their everyday lives.

I strongly suspect this will resonate more with other readers than it did with me. It wasn't awful, and by the last 50 or so pages I was really enjoying it. Seeing Edith fall to pieces every few pages had become pleasantly repetitive by then, and I felt oddly empathetic toward her when she has coffee with Natalie from the climbing gym. However all the stupid pieces of Gossip Girl and Into the Woods that I can never unread really soured me on this book's narrative, and actually made me dread picking it up every time I went back to it.

[Siobhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still Life is a novel about a trans woman trying to make sense of her messy life and the realities of queer love and friendship. Edith is trying to write her second novel and trying to deal with the fact out of her two best friends, now both two exes, one is dead and the other is marrying a man. She's returning to Boston for the first time since her transition, and the narrative moves between the present and the past, her friendships and relationships with Valerie and Tessa, and whether Edith can move beyond this tableau she's caught in to some kind of movement forward.

I didn't know what to expect from this novel, but it really hit me hard. It functions as a character study, exploring not just Edith but snatches of Tessa and Valerie as well, a narrative about transness and queerness and the messiness of moving between categories and identities and existences, and a meditation on autofiction and art more generally, even when a lot of that art is Sondheim and Gossip Girl. It can be disorienting to read at times, moving between the 'present' of the novel and the story of the 'past' chronologically, but for me that works, letting the line between past and present bleed together as Edith tries to form her past into a coherent narrative she could turn into a novel.

The book doesn't offer much closure or many answers, but I love how visceral and full of emotion it feels, making me genuinely cry and laugh (I loved Edith complaining she didn't want to have to learn what 100 gecs is). Like another recent novel, Greta and Valdin, Still Life offers a bittersweet look at the joy and messiness of queerness through the three women that made up its central characters, and it is also an exploration of the glimpses of what might've been and how we cannot solely dwell on these. I think I'll be haunted by Edith for a while.

[Phoebe S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely one of those ones where I feel like I need to read it all over again to properly have an opinion. So much intertextuality, my goodness. I may have tried to focus on that to the exclusion of the narrative, or it may be that the narrative got swallowed up a bit in the references. But I don't know, I loved the Sondheim (still have snippets of Merrily and Into the Woods in my head as I'm writing this), the Bolaño, the wibbly-wobbly-timey-wiminess of it all. It felt sort of as if you were rattling around in Edith's head, ping-ponging from thoughts on Cézanne to various misadventures, and I really liked that experience. I'm not in the exact same place, but could definitely empathize with the feelings.

True to one interpretation of its title, the novel feels short on plot, but that didn't feel like it was essential. Instead, the disjointed way in which Burke tells things feels like a gathering together of vignettes, of moments- but if this is a story made out of moments, the one thing that is not true is that you never know you've had them. The language in here is achingly beautiful at points, dripping and sardonic at others, every vignette hauntingly full of purpose. I ended the book feeling, I'm not sure, perhaps some sliver of the release writing this may have brought Burke? Whatever it was, it brought peace to my own tumbling thoughts.

Rating this 4.25 because I loved every bit of it- it was incredibly enjoyable- but for some reason I feel it comes up just a bit short, not because of its own flaws, but something felt a little...off. Definitely worthwhile and captured a mix of sorrow and angst that's likely to stay with me for a while. Nothing else really does what it does (and phenomenally at that), but I feel other reviewers have articulated it better. I'm just gonna be digesting this for a while.

[Aleksandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still Life by Katherine Packert Burke is a captivating story that draws you in with its seamless writing and compelling plot. From the very beginning, the prose flows beautifully, making it easy to get lost in the narrative. The author’s style feels effortless, each scene blending into the next in a way that keeps the reader engaged without feeling rushed or disjointed.

Without giving too much away, the book centers around a character who finds themselves at a turning point in life, grappling with themes of identity and self-discovery. The way Burke handles these universal themes is both thought-provoking and relatable, offering plenty of moments that make you reflect on your own experiences. The plot unfolds in a way that keeps you intrigued from start to finish, with well-placed twists and turns that maintain the tension and emotional depth throughout.

What I appreciated most about Still Life is how the story never felt forced. The pacing was just right, and the transitions between the more introspective moments and the unfolding events were handled smoothly. Every element of the book felt like it belonged, contributing to the overall narrative in a meaningful way. Burke’s ability to create characters that feel real and multi-dimensional adds even more to the reading experience, making you genuinely care about what happens next.

If you’re looking for a book that combines strong writing with an interesting and emotionally resonant story, Still Life is well worth picking up. It’s a beautifully crafted novel that leaves you thinking long after you’ve finished the last page.

[Jesaka Long · Rating 5 out of 5]

STILL LIFE by Katherine Packert is one of my favorite reads of the last few months. It took me a few chapters to fully sink into Edith’s story and, once I did, I could not put it down. Edith is, as the book jacket says, teetering on disaster. She knows it and doesn’t want it, but she seems incapable of stopping it. Edith makes several cringe-worthy decisions and a few cringe-inducing non-decisions early in the novel, before she travels to Boston, which was an excellent way to have me feeling the same frustration as Edith’s friends who felt they knew what would help her. The “recent past” timeline is so well written: it gorgeously captures the intensity of college life, the fierce friendships and fallouts, and the way loving friends can unintentionally trap us in an outgrown identity. The relationship between Edith, Tessa, and Val feels so real; the variations of that friendship and how they continue to relate to each other (or not) is full of heartbreak. The love and longing Edith has for Val is exquisite and painful. The exploration of gender, transness, and sexuality in STILL LIFE feels very original and entirely relatable.

[Mase · Rating 2 out of 5]

this took me so many months to get through. I don’t think I have another self centered yet self loathing sad girl book in me…
“It isn’t that he doesn’t know what he’s running toward, it’s that the story has nowhere else to go. It’s the appearance of flight they want, knowing the real thing is beyond them.” pg186
This follows a young trans girl out of college who has broken up with her cis ex gf that she’s still hung up on.
The MC, Edith, is processing (to put it loosely) the death of her best friend and trans woman Valerie. Both can’t seem to settle anywhere for long and can’t seem to handle any of their problems in a healthy way. Flawed main characters are not new to me, but when the entire book is them floating around, doing nothing of substance, creating drama with no depth, I can’t be bothered to care too much. I know that was kind of the point (hopefully?) because the author says “there was so much boredom in these books, the dailiness that Woolf would later call ‘cotton wool.’ And Edith loved how boring they were, how they didn’t teach her anything.” pg146
That pretty much summed up how I felt. Bored. But I didn’t love that.

[Kelly Rosalyn Moore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still Life by Katherine Packert Burke is an introspective narrative that explores themes of intertextuality, change, queer relationships, and family. The main narratorial thread oscillates between the pre and post-transition of the protagonist, Edith, and how this changes her outlook on life and the treatment she receives. Edith (and Burke) are writers playing with the autofiction genre; Edith becomes motivated to write her second novel about the death of her trans girlfriend, Val, and the surprising wedding between her ex and a cis man.

This novel was highly ambitious with important contemporary themes weaved between past and present. The pitfall of this novel was the sporadic time jumps written in the stream-of-consciousness writing style. I would have preferred these shifts to take place over separate chapters. Some very overt references to Sondheim and Gossip Girl held me hostage for a while.

Overall this was a great read and I would recommend this book to anyone interested in these themes. Thank you to W.W. Norton & Co, the author, and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Nicole Clapp · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and W. W. Norton & Company for this ARC. I really enjoyed the characters in Still Life! Quotes from this book will stick with me for a long time and I know I’ll return to them. Packert Burke’s writing is absolutely gorgeous, honest, and human.

I loved the descriptions of Cambridge/Somerville and Edith’s complicated relationship with living there (frankly because I can personally relate to this very specifically). I enjoyed the complicated dynamics between Edith, Tessa, and Val.

The structure of the book is what gave me trouble. At points I wasn’t sure which perspective I was reading (past v present). And sometimes, the stories of the past weren’t entirely clear as to why they were being shared—particularly with Val. Also, the ending for me was not totally satisfactory, and if you’re not someone who is cool with a character-driven story (not much plot), this might not be for you.

Overall I enjoyed Still Life but I wish I had clarity on Edith’s future to feel more satisfied.

[Juli · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is a mess. Whiny, annoying characters mixed with poor descriptors and a constant onslaught of tumblr eques "life lessons" wrapped in conversations that already made little sense. I have never been more tired of hearing a trans story speak of its own transness, it constantly falls into this odd self infantilizing garbage that is then pushed onto other trans characters by the narrator. This book feels like reading through your whiny millennial siblings Facebook page.

Also, WHO WRITES ALL OF THEIR DIALOGUE IN ITALICS, ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND. Distracting and makes an already hard to follow novel, even harder to follow.

Actually impossible read, if you want a 'trans novel' please enjoy a good book like Nevada by Imogen Binnie, Dreams of a Woman by Casey Plett, or if you really want to get into an interesting book about your relationship to queerness read Tell Me Im Worthless by Alison Rumfitt

[inapileofyarnandbooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a lot about this book that I really enjoyed, the raw emotional heart of it shines through on every page. The writing itself I found a little difficult; the time jumps without shift in tone make it quite disorienting and difficult to tell where we are occasionally, and that's not necessarily an issue in itself but I did sometimes find myself focusing on context clues to figure out what time period we were in and missing the emotion of the story because of it. I also found the dialogue confusing at times, especially when there were more than 2 people speaking.

Overall, a wonderful debut from a promising author I would love to read more from in future.

Thanks to the publisher and netgalley for the ARC

[Becca Stock · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is definitely a lot to like about this book. It centers on Edith, and her returning to Boston, where she went to college pre-transition. We weave through a few timelines, and I really liked how quotes and plot points from Into the Woods are linked to the narrative.

But it felt a bit jarring and unfinished. The jumps between narratives aren’t always immediately obvious and I kept losing where in the timeline I was meant to be. I also just felt that I didn’t really properly connect with Edith as a character - we know that she doesn’t really know what she wants or who she is, and I didn’t feel like I really deeply knew her at the end of it. Which, considering this is very character led and nothing really happens left me feeling like I missed the point.

[vibefran · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s a new year and once again I worry I may have read my favorite book early on.

We’re never really done finding ourselves, are we? The inner voice, dialogue, and trains of thought in this work feel like they were plucked from my mind and conversations with my friends. The achingly beautiful way the people in this novel work to find meaning and identity in themselves and others will never not be special.

The feelings I hold towards this novel and because of it are hard to express in a review. There were moments when I kept turning back to look at the authors picture and name convinced that I’d see either my name or my ex’s name printed there.

Thank you for this - now for a whole year of reading.

[James Wade · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a gut-punch of a debut!
I had the pleasure of hearing Packert Burke talk about this novel (saying it was for fans of Joni Mitchell and spite), and was lucky enough to get my hands on an ARC.
Edith blew me away. She is such a well-drawn character, with all of the flaws and fears of a real life human person with a shitload of anxiety and regret and pain— but also humor and hopefulness.
Packert Burke’s prose ranges from witty to tender to rightfully sarcastic. She hit the right note on every page. She is a first-class storyteller with a promising future.
Also— pop culture references 10/10

[Maddie Fitzherbert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved the direction this book took with its story and how it conducted emulating real life with the classic book experience. It never fell flat or felt corny and its “all over the place” structure pushed that point further. However I think it would’ve been more of a narrative if it had included Val and Tessa’s POVs as well. Edith spends so much of the novel self reflecting that I think seeing her through Val’s and Tessa’s eyes as well as understanding them through their own would’ve added so much more depth and creativity to the book.

Loved the Natalie subplot that was so current and funny and perfectly placed within the novel.

[Nina :) · Rating 3 out of 5]

*2.5 stars*

The concept of Still Life intrigued me when I picked it up. Loss, grief, and life moving on without you are themes that I'm drawn to, and the ways that those were expressed here was wonderful, especially in the latter half of the book. The structure of moving back and forth between Edith's life in college & just out of college, and then Edith in the present was losing me at first. I didn't always know where we were in time. However, by the second half, the back and forth worked for me really well and kept me engaged.

I do have to admit that the explanations of TV shows, musicals, and movies were a little too verbose, especially when I had already seen whatever the media was. The reliance on Into the Woods as an analogy and metaphor became trite very quickly.

I was also lost by the dialogue far too many times. I understand the italics as a stylistic choice, so that didn't necessarily bother me, but half the time I had to backtrack to figure out which character was speaking, especially in scenes with more than one character present.

Although there were far too many references and explanations throughout the text, there was still something about Edith and Val that compelled me to finish reading their story. I hope to see more stories about trans women in their twenties published following this one, from both Packert Burke and others.

[Kathleen Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

A trans take on the 20 something wafting through life and misery novel. Edith is stunned when she learns that Tessa is engaged to a man. This news makes her reflect on her relationship not only with Tessa but also with Val, who is dead. The novel moves around in time, alternating between Edith's college years and the present. AS is typical of the genre, it's melancholy and at times you might find yourself annoyed with Edith. That said, it is thought provoking and the writing is good. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. One for fans of literary fiction that I admired more than enjoyed.