Still Life

The Frederica Quartet #2

by 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.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Literature, British Literature, Contemporary, Novels

448 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

A.S. Byatt (Antonia Susan Byatt) is internationally known for her novels and short stories. Her novels include the Booker Prize winner Possession, The Biographer’s Tale and the quartet, The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, Babel Tower and A Whistling Woman, and her highly acclaimed collections of short stories include Sugar and Other Stories, The Matisse Stories, The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, Elementals and her most recent book Little Black Book of Stories. A distinguished critic as well as a writer of fiction, A S Byatt was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999.

BYATT, Dame Antonia (Susan), (Dame Antonia Duffy), DBE 1999 (CBE 1990); FRSL 1983; Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France), 2003 , writer; born 24 Aug. 1936;

Daughter of His Honour John Frederick Drabble, QC and late Kathleen Marie Bloor

Byatt has famously been engaged in a long-running feud with her novelist sister, Margaret Drabble, over the alleged appropriation of a family tea-set in one of her novels. The pair seldom see each other and each does not read the books of the other.

Married
1st, 1959, Ian Charles Rayner Byatt (Sir I. C. R. Byatt) marriage dissolved. 1969; one daughter (one son deceased)
2nd, 1969, Peter John Duffy; two daughters.

Education
Sheffield High School; The Mount School, York; Newnham College, Cambridge (BA Hons; Hon. Fellow 1999); Bryn Mawr College, Philadelphia, USA; Somerville College, Oxford.

Academic Honours:
Hon. Fellow, London Inst., 2000; Fellow UCL, 2004
Hon. DLitt: Bradford, 1987; DUniv York, 1991; Durham, 1991; Nottingham, 1992; Liverpool, 1993; Portsmouth, 1994; London, 1995; Sheffield, 2000; Kent 2004; Hon. LittD Cambridge, 1999

Prizes
The PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Of Fiction prize, 1986 for STILL LIFE
The Booker Prize, 1990, for POSSESSION
Irish Times/Aer Lingus International Fiction Prize, 1990 for POSSESSION
The Eurasian section of Best Book in Commonwealth Prize, 1991 for POSSESSION
Premio Malaparte, Capri, 1995;
Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature, California, 1998 for THE DJINN IN THE NIGHTINGALE''S EYE
Shakespeare Prize, Toepfer Foundation, Hamburg, 2002;

Publications:
The Shadow of the Sun, 1964;
Degrees of Freedom, 1965 (reprinted as Degrees of Freedom: the early novels of Iris Murdoch, 1994);
The Game, 1967;
Wordsworth and Coleridge in their Time, 1970 (reprinted as Unruly Times: Wordsworth and Coleridge in their Time, 1989);
Iris Murdoch 1976
The Virgin in the Garden, 1978;
GEORGE ELIOT Selected Essays, Poems and Other Writings , 1979 (editor);
Still Life, 1985
Sugar and Other Stories, 1987;
George Eliot: selected essays, 1989 (editor)
Possession: a romance, 1990
Robert Browning''s Dramatic Monologues, 1990 (editor);
Passions of the Mind, (essays), 1991;
Angels and Insects (novellas),1992
The Matisse Stories (short stories),1993;
The Djinn in the Nightingale''s Eye: five fairy stories, 1994
Imagining Characters, 1995 (joint editor);
New Writing 4, 1995 (joint editor);
Babel Tower, 1996;
New Writing 6, 1997 (joint editor);
The Oxford Book of English Short Stories, 1998 (editor);
Elementals: Stories of fire and ice (short stories), 1998;
The Biographer''s Tale, 2000;
On Histories and Stories (essays), 2000;
Portraits in Fiction, 2001;
The Bird Hand Book, 2001 (Photographs by Victor Schrager Text By AS Byatt);
A Whistling Woman, 2002
Little

Reviews

[Katerina · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Language gripped and drove her”

An absolute gem of a book, absolutely amazing, amazingly precise, precisely competent, competently heartbreaking, heartbreakingly hilarious, I can go on forever.

An absolute must for people who love words and who “suffer from having to use a limited vocabulary”.
You will be oh so rewarded by reading this.

[Lorna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still Life is the second book in the Frederica Quartet by A.S. Byatt basically picking up where The Virgin in the Garden ended. This is a rich and artistic and literary novel taking place from the sunlit fields of Provence in the south of France in Arles, where the art of Vincent Van Gogh, his dramatic use of color, and his letters to his brother Theo are intricately woven into the fabric of the story. There is also the excitement of academia in Cambridge as we continue to follow the lives of the Potter family in the 1950s in England.

Although Still Life opens with a Prologue set in January 1980 in London at a Post-Impressionism exhibit at the Royal Academy of Arts featuring the works of Van Gogh, the book essentially follows the Potter family over a four-year period of time beginning in December 1953. Bill and Winnifred are attempting to come to terms with their relationship as their children leave home to begin their lives. Stephanie has given up a promising academic career, setting aside her study of William Wordsworth to marry the village minister, Daniel Orton, as they now excitedly prepare for the birth of their first child. Frederica, spending the summer in Provence enthralled with the paintings, the colors and the life of Van Gogh in southern France before enrolling in in Cambridge University. And Marcus Potter has been fighting his way back from an acute nervous breakdown and developing new friendships and relationships as he returns to school.

There is a richness and depth to the lives of these people as they often struggle to learn their individual responsibilities as well as their responsibilities to one another. One cannot help but be drawn into the intricacies and literary richness of these pages and into the lives of this extended British family as a stunning event forever alters the lives of each. I certainly am looking forward to reading the next two books in this series by this wonderful British writer, A.S. Byatt.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars rounded up
This is the last book in my Reading Women challenge this year; 35 books in all (I’m already planning next year). This is from the 1980s section (a book from each year of the 1980s). It is also the second part of a quartet (a fact I wasn’t aware of). The quartet is about the Potter family and as it is called the Frederica Quartet, one of the main characters, Frederica, is one of the daughters of the family. This book covers her Cambridge years (from just before to just after); deep joy!! Stephanie, her older sister has left academia and married a clergyman and produces two children during the book. Marcus her younger brother is portrayed as being intelligent but problematic. Byatt here may be trying to portray someone on the autistic spectrum. Presumably the first in the series covered childhood and Stephanie’s university career.
This is set in the mid-1950s and is very much a novel of the English middle classes of the sort that I am beginning to feel I have been put on this earth to warn against. This is articulate, clever with assorted intelligent dons and plenty of analysis of poetry, and religion. The poor are not present apart from being there to be done unto by the goodly middle class folk. There is a bit of stuff about painting, hence the title. There are some odd names here too, some of which for me evoked Hardy and not in a good way. The younger brother Marcus apparently has what would now be called PTSD, following an incident in the first book. This portrayal for me didn’t really work and seemed very muddled.
Another annoyance was the author suddenly intervening, like this:
“The language with which I might try to order Frederica's hectic and somewhat varied sexual life in 1954-55 was not available to Frederica then.”
And this:
“The germ of this novel was a fact that was also a metaphor: a young woman, with a child, looking at a tray of earth in which unthinned seedlings on etiolated pale stalks died in the struggle for survival. She held in her hand the picture of a flower, the seed packet with its bright image. Nasturtium, Giant Climbing, mixed.”
This became annoying and I felt there was really no need for it.
It is undoubtedly clever and perceptive and perhaps captures a time and place for a certain class. There are lots of clever references and literary links and some will love this, I didn’t.

[Davide · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Free Woman

La casualità degli incroci di letture mi ha portato a finire la seconda lettura di questa Still Life proprio mentre iniziavo per la prima volta The Golden Notebook di Doris Lessing. E così ho scoperto che questa fine e questo inizio sono entrambi ambientati in Inghilterra precisamente nello stesso periodo, nella seconda metà degli anni Cinquanta; e almeno in parte nello stesso ambiente intellettuale.
Il "romanzo portante" dei taccuini di Doris Lessing si intitola Free Women e inscena donne di una generazione precedente: d'altra parte Doris era del 1919, Antonia è del 1936; e una componente autobiografica rispettivamente in Anna Wulf e in Frederica Potter è sicura.
Ma è intrigante vedere come vivono, pensano, leggono, scrivono, si muovono queste "donne libere" (ventenni o quarantenni che siano) negli stessi anni e negli stessi (o quasi) ambienti. E colpisce allora come – rispetto a Lessing – si percepisca molto meno un senso di durezza e di crisi. I quasi vent'anni di differenza contano. E ancora di più, probabilmente, i vent'anni di differenza della scrittura: Still Life esce nel 1985 e in confronto al Taccuino si legge come una sintesi (piacevolmente ampia e distesa) rispetto a una concentrata e furiosa analisi. Centinaia di pagine, e forse l’intero libro di Lessing (non l’ho ancora finito), si possono concentrare in uno o due capitoletti di Byatt.

Anche perché, al di là di questo confronto, quella di Byatt continua a essere una narrazione con molti fuochi: è proprio riduttivo chiamare questi libri il Frederica Quartet!
Perché oltre a Frederica Potter, che dal natio Yorkshire vediamo qui proiettata sul desiderato palcoscenico più ampio: dalla calda Provenza dove va come ragazza alla pari al Newnham College di Cambridge o a Londra; della quale possiamo seguire i molti incontri, la classificazioni degli uomini, le passioni per i professori-scrittori, più grandi e carismatici, con rapporto complicato con la fisicità, ma anche per un tipo di inglesità del tutto diversa, come quella incarnata dall’erede di una grande casa aristocratica di campagna, con caratteristiche e abilità impensabili nel mondo di Cambridge (guidare auto sportive, conoscere i menù dei ristoranti di qualità, ma anche saper fare un massaggio efficace e leggere i libri e il mondo in un modo diretto e “originale”, comunque diverso da quello universitario); e della quale continuiamo a conoscere l’evoluzione intellettuale, le letture che passano dal canone-Leavis del padre (con grande importanza per George Eliot e Lawrence ad esempio) a Mallarmé, Proust, Beckett, nella continuità dei classici inglesi (da Shakespeare a Donne, ai romantici, fino a una tragicomica messa in scena del Comus di Milton, ecc.); e a un certo punto veniamo anche a sapere che vuole studiare l’italiano per leggere Dante; e ne percepiamo il fastidio per il ribellismo maschilista degli scrittori alla moda in quel momento, sostanzialmente gli Angry young men (Lucky Jim di Kinglsey Amis, Look back in anger di John Osborne)…
Oltre a Frederica, dicevo, conta altrettanto la sorella Stephanie, col marito Daniel, rimasta invece nel nord, nel rapporto familiare, nella gravidanza, nella comunità locale (ma la lettura della poesia ha anche nella sua vita un ruolo notevole); oppure il fratello Marcus, un’altra visione completamente diversa del mondo, che si evolve e muta rispetto al libro precedente; ma anche Alexander, che è diventato un autore famoso e rimugina argomenti possibili per nuovi drammi teatrali: l’incontro-scontro tra Gauguin e Van Gogh in Provenza (le lettere di Van Gogh sono uno dei leitmotiv del libro, spesso citate), ma anche il trovatore Guillem de Cabestanh oppure l’estate 1914, estremo scampolo di pace prima della Prima guerra mondiale. Per non parlare degli altri.

Un’altra cosa che continua, ampliandosi verso la fine del secondo libro, è la tendenza all’inserimento da parte della narratrice di considerazioni che riguardano il futuro: il cambiamento di mode, costumi, idee, gusti, tendenze, luoghi negli anni successivi rispetto a quelli narrati. Con meravigliosa fluidità, poi, talvolta si distanzia dai personaggi e comunica direttamente con i lettori, dal punto di vista (temporale, culturale, narrativo) del presente della scrittura (quindi metà anni Ottanta, trent’anni dopo gli eventi raccontati), ragionando anche sulla natura del romanzo. Ad esempio: «Pensavo, cominciando questo romanzo, che sarebbe stato un romanzo di denominazione ed esattezza. Volevo scrivere un romanzo allo stesso modo in cui secondo Williams si dovrebbe scrivere una poesia: niente idee se non nelle cose.»
A pensarci bene anche questo si può mettere in relazione – tra affinità e divergenze – con il libro di Doris Lessing, che è fatto di un romanzo portante e degli estratti dei taccuini dai diversi colori scritti dal personaggio principale: è tutto molto diverso, ma si tratta pur sempre di scrivere il libro e scrivere il ragionamento sulla scrittura al tempo stesso, e a diversi livelli.

Alla fine dei quattro forse varrà la pena ripensare alle diverse forme di legame tra le diverse parti. Una che si evidenzia qui subito è che anche il secondo libro, proprio come La vergine nel giardino , inizia con un prologo ambientato nel futuro rispetto al tempo narrativo principale, costruito con gli stessi elementi: un incontro, in un museo, tra Frederica, Alexander e Daniel. Stavolta è la Royal Academy of Arts, l’anno è il 1980. Si può capire che dal teatro stiamo andando anche verso la pittura. Alexander ha da tempo scritto quel dramma sul periodo di Van Gogh a Arles con Gauguin, mentre Frederica è diventata critica d’arte per la radio..

Sul finale non posso dire niente, direttamente. Ma posso dire che il tutto è per me fonte di piacere. Di quel tipo di piacere complesso che coinvolge l’esperienza delle cose più atroci e insopportabili. Scarto allora nell’esperienza di lettura: ho letto per la seconda volta le ultime pagine, rallentando, con forte partecipazione, facendole dialogare dentro di me con le precise immagini che mi si erano fissate dentro in modo molto duraturo dalla prima lettura.
L’ultimissima scena in realtà non è più un finale, perché spinge già con forza verso La torre di Babele. E io non devo nemmeno aspettare undici anni come i primi lettori di Still Life. (Altro che Cronache del ghiaccio e del fuoco!)

p.s. La copertina italiana con il quadro di Casorati è sempre ipnotica.

p.s.2 Una piccola conferma, dai Ringraziamenti della Torre di Babele: «Gli scrittori che più mi hanno influenzata con le loro idee negli anni ’60, e sono tuttora assai importanti per me, sono Iris Murdoch, Doris Lessing e George Steiner.»

p.s.3 Seconda conferma, da Una donna che fischia, quando inizia il programma televisivo di Frederica: «vennero realizzate tre puntate pilota [...] Nella seconda si parlò di George Eliot e dell'idea di donna libera nel Taccuino d'oro di Doris Lessing».

[Bloodorange · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a novel that made me cringe time after time, and yet I am compelled to say I loved it (not as much as The Virgin in the Garden, perhaps, and not as much as Possession, but it still is very impressive).

Be warned: there's more of the authorial voice in this part, which may seem a little intrusive; there are the little lectures on plant life (Marius' new hobby), which may seem redundant, but are beautiful, too:

[The] English elm propagates itself underground, and was probably imported by Stone Age tribe who valued its suckering habit for fences. It might be thought a peculiarly happy tree, a self-sufficient tree, a kind of single eternity. The lack of variation among the clones, however, makes them peculiarly susceptible to the same disease. But in the 1955 was a sempiternal, essential part of our English landscape.

There are attempts at documenting not only lives, but also lifestyles - new esthetics, new food even - of mid-fifties (chapter 14!), and at times I read the novel with the same fascination with which I read my mother's collection of Ty i Ja, Polish lifestyle magazine from the sixties, a treasure trove of intellectual, visual, sociological trends of the time:
http://www.dwutygodnik.com/artykul/36...
http://www.wysokieobcasy.pl/wysokie-o...

There is The Uncomfortable. Byatt tests us from the very first pages, showing us misfortune and loss, sometimes describing them in cringeworthy beautiful phrases which nevertheless hit home. This is Daniel, looking at pregnant Stephanie taking care of a battered, bruised, burnt child:

[Seeing] Mary's shapelessness goblin-like straddling [Stephanie's] thick hips he wanted her and his child out of there, as though they were vulnerable to these most bizarre manifestations of the random and the destructive.

But there also is Stephanie herself, about to give birth, packing her hospital bag:

She hadn't packed her statutory suitcase: now she began: nightdress, hairbrush, toothbrush, soap, Wordsworth, War and Peace, Arabella, Friday's Child. If Wordsworth was not right, what was? She desperately added the Four Quartets.

(This reminds me how I packed the first volume of Ulysses. Hint: don't. Also, you may consider not reading the book if you're pregnant.)

Byatt is unsparing when it comes to some of the embarrassing aspects of human life - brutality and births, stupidity and passivity, bodily functions and mysteries. Still, she handles the really sensitive issues (death, sexual abuse) in a sensitive manner.

Click here for my review of the first installment of The Frederica Quartet series - The Virgin in the Garden: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Майя Ставитская · Rating 5 out of 5]

Softness
It was the middle of the 50s - a quiet, peaceful (now forgotten) time: people had just stopped living in constraint; the Suez crisis and the Hungarian Uprising were still a year away. Most Britons modestly and calmly expected that life would get better and better.
Tenderness and calmness. What I felt when I opened the book now to write about it. This Azbuka edition is arranged in such a way that blurbs (quotes from critics' reviews), of which there are usually one or two, and put them on the back of the cover, here occupy several pages at the beginning of the volume. A lot of people, whose opinion determines the place of the work among cultural artifacts, have said many wonderful words about the "Living Thing".

Everyone praises and everyone talks about different things: depth and breadth, originality and "in the best traditions", richness to excess and precision of the surgical lancet. The world of ideas and the world of passions, an epic canvas and penetration into the hidden depths of the soul. All about one book, not the most famous by the author. Not even about an autonomous novel, but part of a tetralogy. Why? Because it's worth it.

This book is one of the rare things that can dispel mental turmoil and bring you back to you. Such as I would like to see. I read it to write a short review for a literary portal, about ten days ago. And opening it now, I realized. how many bad things happened to be felt during this ten-day period: anxiety, misunderstanding, disbelief, resentment, Spanish shame, bitterness, anxiety, fear, humiliation, an attack of horror, hopelessness, the collapse of the value system - the background in which we are against our will.

So, with this novel, just opening it, I returned to myself before all this. I felt tenderness and calmness. Such is the property of great literature, to level out the abominations of life, to put them in a framework, to give understanding - they are not all that you have. I know. not suitable for everyone, but if you are a bookish person, you are here. The second part of the "Frederica Quartet" covering a time span of twenty-five years and took the same amount of time to work on it from the writer.

This tetralogy is considered the magnum opus of Antonia Bayette, although prestigious literary awards have brought her other works. Perhaps it's the specifics, the four books were written really, very long, for a total of a quarter of a century with long breaks. But something also forced the writer to return to history and heroes over and over again, something prompted the Azbuka Atticus to translate, twenty years after the publication of the last book. And, hand on heart, this is the best news of spring.

That is, before. before reading "A Living Thing", it is necessary to read "The Virgin in the Garden", right? Not at all, "Frederica's Quartet" is the case when you can take up the next book in order without reading the previous ones, it is enough to know a brief background, the alignment of forces, the relationships of the characters. Of course, if you read the first novel, the pleasure of the second will increase exponentially.

The Potter family: furious Bill, a rare combination of pedagogical and organizational talents at work and a domestic tyrant in the family; his selfless wife Winnifred, the eldest daughter angelic Stephanie, the youngest furious Frederica, and son Marcus, partly autistic - they are all going through a time of change. The nest is empty with Stephanie's marriage, Marcus is recovering from the effects of a nervous breakdown and temporarily lives in his sister's house, Frederica is preparing for Cambridge and is "absent". Winnifred is going through empty nest syndrome, and Bill has no one to worry about.

Stephanie is preparing to become a mother, trying on a sacrificial role, which inevitably goes to a woman who brings dreams and ambitions to the altar of marriage and motherhood. While Frederica, all the storm and onslaught, wants to take everything from life: to learn, to experience, to survive, to achieve and achieve as much as possible, finding use for all her talents. Marcus, in general, seems to be slowly coming out of his cocoon.

They get new experiences, live and reflect on a lot of situations, they try to replay the eternal play in which the generation of parents squandered their lives. They believe that they will be able to do everything and everything will work out for them. Well, because the time is different now, kinder to people than what was given to previous generations. And because they themselves are smarter (who would doubt it). They will not repeat mistakes, and happiness lies ahead in a brave new world.

The original title of the book "Still Life", directly correlates with the still life, with the study of the nature of color and light. Just as Shakespeare and drama were the full-fledged heroes of "Maidens in the Garden", so here they became van Gogh and painting. Bayette somehow manages to talk about things from the cultural and intellectual sphere, filling them with the beating of living blood. When she talks about it, you get into it and it gets into you.

You will be touched and indignant with this book, you will laugh more than once (I cannot guarantee that this laughter will be kind) and you will cry once (it will be impossible not to cry there). I cannot but say about the translation by Dmitry Psurtsev and Daria Ustinova, it is magnificent, and the luxurious redundancy and intoxicating complexity of this prose will remind you at the same time of Dickens, Gogol and Nabokov.

Funny, tragic, touching, intelligent, deep and surprisingly lively thing.

Нежность
На дворе стояла середина 50-х — тихое, мирное (ныне подзабытое) время: люди только-только перестали жить в стеснении; до Суэцкого кризиса и Венгерского восстания ещё год. Большинство британцев скромно и спокойно ждали, что жизнь будет делаться всё лучше и лучше.
Нежность и спокойствие. То, что я почувствовала, открыв сейчас книгу, чтобы писать о ней. Это Азбучное издание так устроено, что блёрбы (цитаты из отзывов критиков), которых обычно бывает одна-две, и помещают их на заднюю сторону обложки, здесь занимают несколько страниц в начале томика. Множество людей, чье мнение определяет место произведения в ряду культурных артефактов, сказали о "Живой вещи" много прекрасных слов.

Все хвалят и все говорят о разном: глубина и широта, оригинальность и "в лучших традициях", богатство до избыточности и точность хирургического ланцета. Мир идей и мир страстей, эпическое полотно и проникновение в потаенные душевные глубины. Все об одной, не самой знаменитой у автора, книге. Даже не об автономном романе, а части тетралогии. Почему? Потому что она того стоит.

Эта книга из числа редких вещей, умеющих развеять душевную смуту и вернуть тебе тебя. Такой, какой хотела бы видеть. Я читала ее, чтобы написать короткий отзыв для литературного портала, дней десять назад. И открыв сейчас, поняла. как много скверного довелось перечувствовать за эту десятидневку: тревога, непонимание, неверие, обида, испанский стыд, горечь, беспокойство, страх, унижение, приступ ужаса, безнадежность, крушение системы ценностей - тот фон, в котором мы находимся против воли.

Так вот, с этим романом, просто открыв его, я вернулась к себе до всего этого. Почувствовала нежность и спокойствие. Такое у великой литературы свойство, нивелировать мерзости жизни, помещать их в рамки, дарить понимание - они не все, что у тебя есть. Знаю. подходит не всем, но если вы книжный человек, вам сюда. Вторая часть "Квартета Фредерики" охватывающего временной промежуток в двадцать пять лет и столько же времени взяла работа над ним у писательницы.

Эту тетралогию считают magnum opus Антонии Байетт, хотя престижные литературные премии принесли ей другие работы. Возможно дело в специфике, писалось четырехкнижие действительно, очень долго, в общей сложности четверть века с длительными перерывами. Но что-то же заставляло писательницу раз за разом возвращаться к истории и героям, что-то сподвигло Азбуку Аттикус на перевод, спустя двадцать лет после опубликования последней книги. И, положа руку на сердце - это лучшая новость весны.

То есть, прежде. чем читать "Живую вещь", необходимо прочесть "Деву в саду", так? Вовсе нет, "Квартет Фредерики" - тот случай, когда за следующую по порядку книгу можно браться, не прочтя предыдущих, достаточно знать краткую предысторию, расстановку сил, отношения персонажей. Разумеется, если прочтешь первый роман, удовольствие от второго возрастет по экспоненте.

Семья Поттеров: неистовый Билл, редкое сочетание педагогического и организаторского талантов на работе и домашний тиран в семье; его самоотверженная супруга Уиннифред, старшая дочь ангелоподобная Стефани, младшая яростная Фредерика, и сын Маркус, отчасти аутист - все они переживают время перемен. Гнездо с замужеством Стефани опустело, Маркус оправляется от последствий нервного срыва и временно живет в доме сестры, Фредерика готовится к Кембриджу и "присутствуя отсутствует". Уиннифред переживает синдром опустевшего гнезда, а Биллу не над кем яриться.

Стефани готовится стать матерью, примеряя жертвенную роль, какая неизбежно достается женщине, приносящей мечты и амбиции на алтарь супружества и материнства. В то время как Фредерика, вся буря и натиск, желает брать от жизни все: узнать, испытать, пережить, добиться и достичь как можно больше всего, найдя применение всем своим талантам. Маркус, в общем, кажется потихоньку выходит из своего кокона.

Они получают новый опыт, проживают и рефлексируют множество ситуаций, они пытаются переиграть вечную пьесу, в которой поколение родителей бездарно растратило свою жизнь. Они верят, что сумеютвсе и все у них получится. Ну, потому что время сейчас другое, более доброе к людям, чем то, какое доставалось в удел предыдущим поколениям. И потому что сами они умнее (кто ��ы сомневался). Они не повторят ошибок, а впереди счастье в дивном новом мире.

Оригинальное название книги "Still Life", напрямую соотносится с натюрмортом, с исследованием природы цвета и света. Как полноправными героями «Девы в саду» были Шекспир и драматургия, так здесь ими стали ван Гог и живопись. Байетт каким-то немыслимым образом удается говорить о вещах из культурной и интеллектуальной сферы, наполняя их биением живой крови. Когда об этом рассказывает она, ты входишь в это и это входит в тебя.

Вы будете умиляться и возмущаться с этой книгой, не раз посмеетесь (не могу гарантировать, что смех этот будет добрым) и один раз заплачете (там нельзя будет не заплакать). Не могу не сказать о переводе Дмитрия Псурцева и Дарьи Устиновой, он великолепен, а роскошная избыточность и упоительная непростота этой прозы напомнят одновременно о Диккенсе, Гоголе и Набокове.

Смешная, трагичная, трогательная, умная, глубокая и удивительно живая вещь.

[Bettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007jsk8

Description: Frederica Potter, 'doomed to be intelligent', plunges into Cambridge University life greedy for knowledge, sex and love. In Yorkshire her sister Stephanie has abandoned academe for the cosy frustration of the family. Alexander Wedderburn, now in London, struggles to make a play about Van Gogh, whose art and tragic life give the novel its central leitmotiv.

In this sequel to her much praised The Virgin in the Garden, and the second in a magnificent quartet, A. S. Byatt illuminates the inevitable conflicts between ambition and domesticity, confinement and self-fulfillment, while providing a subtle yet incisive observation of the intellectual and cultural life in England during the 1950s.

The parents are upset when Frederica prepares to leave home and Marcus goes to live with his sister.

Frederica leaves for the south of France, while Stephanie and Daniel are celebrating.

Marcus visits his new nephew, Frederica assesses Cambridge men and 'lively' new vicar, Gideon arrives

Stephanie escapes from her nagging mother-in-law and leaves Marcus to care for her baby.

Frederica discovers Raphael, Stephanie's baby, is on its way, but what is Gideon up to at the coast?

Frederica has decisions to make and Alexander's play has its First Night. What will Raphael make of it all?

Daniel becomes disillusioned with home and the church, and there is some disturbing news for Stephanie

[Joel]

The organizer of the book club I'd recently joined chose this for the group to read, citing it as one of her favorite novels read during the one year of an aborted Master's in literature that she managed to bring up at least twice per meeting.

I got this book out of the library. A few days later, I quit the book club. A few weeks later, the book club disbanded.

Just saying.

[Ruta · Rating 4 out of 5]

The length of this novel is not one of its virtues. Narrative flourish and verbal excess wage a constant battle with the reading mind. I'm tempted to speak of Proust, whose 'lost time' seems to offer itself as a key source of Byatt's anxiety of influence. Or Van Gogh, whose canvases haunt Byatt's imagination and prick the eyes of our memory, withdrawing their meaning into the lushness of words. Or, indeed, the metafictional passages of authorial self-reflection - unnecessary and tedious, for the most part. But then you get to the second half of the book and the tedium breaks. And you see how the novel unfolds as an exercise in marriage between feeling and cognition, words and pictures, desire and deprivation. It is from how writers speak about death that we know how well they understand life, and Byatt puts us in an empty room on the edge of language. The slugishness of grief is a Proustian lesson. No art can make life still, not even a still life, is Van Gogh's promise. Byatt has mastered both.

[Abby · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up because I’ll do anything Patricia Lockwood tells me to (re: last summer’s LRB essay on Byatt, “Isn’t that… female?”). Lockwood is always right. Still Life is SO worth all of the damn effort. This long, dense novel about three British siblings, variously adrift and anchored, felt like it was for ME, an aging former English major who loves words and is desperate to see the depth beneath the scores of human quiddities (Byatt’s favorite word). I want to read it all over again. I wanted it to have been entirely about Stephanie, and could have done without Marcus altogether, and I was chastened to recognize glimpses of myself in Frederica. (I want to be like Stephanie; I am more like Frederica.) I had to look up a word almost every other page. I was floored by Byatt’s incredible facility, her sensitivity, her depth of feeling and philosophical range. I found her description of childbirth to be the most accurate and intimate I’ve ever read. I was perplexed by the occasional burst of first person, and could have probably done without the Van Gogh letter snippets, and there are some characters who don’t seem worth the stage time, but it was a joyful experience, this novel. I cried in the end! I won’t soon forget it!

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I agree with the blurb from Anthony Burgess on the back cover: "We are in the presence of a remarkable intelligence....the allusiveness of (this book) is part of its strength, but the primal strength derives from the courage of the clear eye and an almost frightening compassion." I first read this about 25 years ago, and while I was amazed and impressed, I was also intimidated by that very allusiveness Burgess mentions. Now I'm better-read and I can deal with it with more success. I recognize Milton when, talking about murder mysteries, Byatt compares the number of dead bodies to "leaves in Vallombrosa." Behind Milton I recognize Dante, and behind Dante, Virgil, comparing shades in the underworld to leaves. (But it does seem a little weighty and pretentious for the context of detective stories.) I usually recognized Tennyson, Wordsworth, and Donne when she quoted them too. On the other hand a chapter is entitled "Hic ille Raphael." Anybody recognize the reference? Me neither. 25 years ago looking it up would have meant half a day in the library and probably slight success; now two minutes on Google will do the trick. She also drops in Tolstoy, Proust, Mallarme, Leavis, Eliot (T.S. and George), Empson, Wittgenstein, Kipling, Dickens, Auden, Austen, Winnie the Pooh...I sometimes wonder if there are more than a dozen ideal readers for Byatt on the planet. Still, the characters are solid, the heroine is not always likable, death (when it comes) is unforgettable, and scenes are often vividly dramatic. A remarkably detailed portrait (still life?) of England during the mid 1950's.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

From BBC Radio 4 Extra:

9/30: The parents are upset when Frederica prepares to leave home and Marcus goes to live with his sister.

10/30: Frederica leaves for the south of France, while Stephanie and Daniel are celebrating.

11/30: Marcus visits his new nephew, Frederica assesses Cambridge men and 'lively' new vicar, Gideon arrives.

12/30: Stephanie escapes from her nagging mother-in-law and leaves Marcus to care for her baby.

13/30: Frederica discovers Raphael, Stephanie's baby, is on its way, but what is Gideon up to at the coast?

14:30: Frederica has decisions to make and Alexander's play has its First Night. What will Raphael make of it all?

15/30:Daniel becomes disillusioned with home and the church, and there is some disturbing news for Stephanie.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007jsk8

[Deea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, what a ride! Byatt's wonderfully erudite voice left me flabbergasted. I will definitely have to read The Virgin in the Garden once again in the future as the fact that I could not connect to it definitely had to do with my mood, not the writing. This second volume of The Frederica Quartet is simply splendid. It was a wonderful delight for all my senses! Hats off to Dame Byatt once again!

[Leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

As much Stephanie's or Alexander's story as Frederica's, this is just as complex, uncompromising and fascinating as the first entry in the quartet; in fact, I enjoyed this more because the major theme was a deep academic and literary study of colour rather than a flustered, fumbling, melodramatic study of the world as scientifically God-created through the eyes of two extremely strange individuals, ie Marcus and his teacher.

All Byatt's work is complex and intense, but no less enjoyable for the experience, and this is no exception. The human relationships are never overshadowed by the literary metaphors; indeed, they are inextricable. It's delightful to read a book about such ferociously, unapologetically intelligent people. The reader is incidental; we are expected to keep up, and if we don't, there aren't any breadcrumbs to lead us onwards. Byatt's depth of knowledge of her topics are formidable; I despair of ever knowing even a tenth of what she discourses on extensively.

But then, literature was never my subject, and occasionally I can look up from this opus and murmur quietly to myself who cares? before diving back in again with gusto. Which is probably the most one can ask of a novel in the end.

[Jennifer Orr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Byatt is my all-time favorite author. Not done with this one yet, but can tell this will be another favorite, up there with "Virgin in the Garden" and "Possession." Frederica returns from "Virgin" and is now established as my favorite character ever. I'm particularly loving "Still Life" because of Byatt's questioning of whether language is even adequate enough to depict our tangible world. Yet we treat it as an absolute. The Van Goghs, the ants (wouldn't be a Byatt book without some exploration in explicit, sometimes excruciating, detail of some insect or plant or other), Cambridge. There's so much in this book...Still Life...how we try, most of the time ineffectively, to capture life with words, maybe art is the more successful medium...our obsessive compulsion to name things, to classify things, to understand something by comparing it to the human experience...how life can be so confining for a woman, whether she's a mother trapped at home or a woman "of the world" ultimately trapped in a man's world. Although this was written more than 20 years ago and takes place in 1960s England, this novel is still so relevant. Sigh. I love Byatt.

[Natalia · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Rowizyx · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anche Natura morta non ha esattamente la magia che ho percepito in Possessione e ne Il libro dei bambini (inizio a pensare che Possessione possa considerarsi un po' uno spartiacque per questa autrice...), tuttavia è apprezzabile che già scorra meglio e più piacevolmente di La vergine nel giardino, che avevo finito un po' per testardaggine e un po' per incredulità nel trovare così pesante un libro della Byatt, che appunto ha scritto due dei miei libri preferiti di sempre.

Il quartetto di Frederica, che non è propriamente una serie e si può leggere spaiato (anche se chiaramente, portando avanti gli stessi personaggi, letto in ordine cronologico è di certo più chiaro), prosegue in maniera più chiara e semplice da leggere rispetto al primo capitolo, e guida bene dietro ai vari personaggi della famiglia Potter. Il finale arriva come una mazzata sui denti, tanto che sono tentata di buttare all'aria il mio esile piano letture per prendere subito La torre di Babele...

[Paul Dinger · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very fit title for this book. It isn't really a sequel as much as a continuation. It now contrasts the artist Van Gogh's failed relationships with those of the book. We can see the bumps ahead for Federica, we can see how unconnected Marcus is. The death at the center throws everything into relief. A Still Life is a painting where the artist tries to show as much of real life as possible while still being an artist. In other words, control life as an artist. But life, as this book says can't be controlled. Van Gogh couldn't make his relationships with Gaugin and the woman he loved work. There is a sense, as it was in Virgin in the Garden, there is the life Federica wants to live, and there is the life she meets with. She loves Faber, but winds up with another who seems somewhat sinister in a scary way. He is described as always watching her replies, which is so controlling and not good in a potential mate. I am in the prcess of rediscovering Byatt. I loved Possession but really didn't like the books I picked up since. I have been revisiting them, and maybe it is because I am older and more mature (ha) that they are better? I don't know. I started with Shadow of the Sun and now The Virgin and this one. I do enjoy this series, which really just seems to be one novel thus far with different sections.

[Louise Carlson Stowell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I tried to get through this book. I loved "Possession." This one I had to force my way to half way through before I gave up. Many of the characters are cardboard-ish. It is tedious...painfully tedious. I was interested in Marcus, Alexander, and Stephanie and thought their lives could have been expounded on more. The rest of the characters could have been left out. I didn't care about them, nor did I want to. It rambles without any real tension or plot from what I could see.

[Olya Zakharyan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have no words yet. It’s a bliss!
Byatt is absolutely genius. Really, it’s worth learning English just to be able to read ‘Still Life’ as it’s originally written.

[Emiliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Le había parecido silvestre y nueva, polvo y luz, porque ella también lo era."

Renovados, y para renovarnos, continuamos la vida y proezas de Federica Potter, ahora en Cambridge (y en Londres, y en Nozières), y su intrincada familia y la miríada de amigos y compañeros; la bulliciosa vida de la mente, hirviente de querencias y esperanzas atrapada entre dos épocas, en su valiente búsqueda de un camino propio relatada del modo magistral y vertiginoso al que nos tiene (mal) acostumbrados Dama Antonia, una de las más grandes.

El nombre de esta obra remite a ese género pictórico en desuso, que tan bien refleja, si es Arte como esta novela, el "todo está lleno de vida" que es el germen del auténtico conocimiento. Entre las muchas fecundas imágenes y referencias que maneja la autora (a veces barajándolas ante nuestra agradecida lectura) podemos centrarnos en La silla de Van Gogh como imagen de la solidez, del refugio, universal como no es el lenguaje, inasequible a las vacilaciones de la conversación, frente al temor a lo desconocido, a la insania y al trágico error. Byatt declara que la historia surge de una madre con su niño pequeño en el jardín, el germen de las plantas en su lucha por sobrevivir cabe el paquete de semillas con su brillante dibujo. Sea. Una Maravilla.

"¿Creamos estas imágenes para entender el mundo, para decorarlo o para conectarnos con él?"

"—Ése es el tipo de razonamiento completamente idiota que me exaspera. Es la clase de tontería simplista que esperaba evitar. «Todo es relativo.» Sólo puede ser relativo respecto a algo. [...] No podemos concebir la idea de sucesos azarosos o condiciones caóticas si simultáneamente o, más bien, previamente no tenemos un concepto de orden, un orden de números, de formas, de leyes. [...] Sigmund Freud, como Johannes Kepler, era un científico y creía en la verdad"

"Pese a todas nuestras ventanas, apenas lograremos entrever el mundo real. Creo, como Planck, que éste es real, que existe, que nuestra obligación, nuestra necesidad y nuestro placer es formarnos una imagen de él."

"las que comparan una abstracción humana con una experiencia sensorial: la aflicción con un cuchillo sin filo, el amor con una brújula, el deseo con un grano de polvo estirado desde el cielo al infierno"

"Lo privado y lo público, lo animal y lo cultural, expresado de forma tan fugaz y evanescente que su orden no quedaba establecido."

"Ese verano, el muro del fondo de la casa quedó decorado con discos verdes, cilíndricos tallos trepadores y trompetas de seda fruncida, escarlata y naranja, marfil y rojo caoba, cromo oscuro y gamuza, con líneas negras que indicaban a las mariposas el camino a los oscuros y polvorientos estambres que temblaban en los cálices. Stephanie los observaba alzarse a la luz de la mañana, replegarse en fláccidos triángulos por la noche, y le venía a la mente el cuento de Jack y las judías mágicas, la prosaica y malhumorada madre a quien le habían dado un puñado de semillas a cambio de una vaca y se había encontrado al pie de una brillante escalera que ascendía hasta el cielo."

"Saciedad, orgasmo o lo que con acierto se ha llamado la «experiencia del ajá», cuando una estructura que parecía defectuosa o incompleta se percibe de pronto como completa y armoniosa."

"tuvo conciencia de que no lo conocía y que nunca lo había visto, y que, en ese aire puro y brillante, lo amaba con una sencillez que nunca había creído que experimentaría. «Tú», le dijo, piel contra piel por primera vez al aire libre, que era cálido y resplandeciente, «tú»"

"es absolutamente imposible pensar sin considerar y revalorar los modos de pensar y de ver que hemos aprendido a lo largo de la vida. Todos rehacemos el mundo según como lo vemos, según como lo miramos.

[Aleksandra Bekreneva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Великая и беспощадная Байетт

Поддалась я очарованию писательницы, текста, всей истории ещё больше и глубже во второй книге «Квартета Фредерики». Зафанатела чуть. Расслабилась.

Университетский период Фредерики, под сенью юношей в цвету, Кембридж. А я так люблю учиться, что сходила в университет аж два раза и периодически возникают мысли вернуться в качестве преподавателя (только мысли), в общем, обожаю академическую атмосферу.

Любовь-морковь, познание себя, беседы о высоком, диссертации, званые вечера, платья от портнихи, катания на авто, танцы.

Параллельно линия Стефани, старшей сестры Фредерики. Замужество, быт, рождение детей, отношения со свекровью.

Хочешь-не хочешь, противопоставление сестёр, а что и как девушке выбирать, когда хочется и кучу детишек, и реализацию, в общем, не оторваться.

Фоном сумасшедше-гениальный младший брат Фредерики и Стефани — Маркус, который, как обычно, слегка творит дичь.

И ВДРУГ.

Момент в книге, когда я просто села в шоке. Я не поверила. Я подумала, что, наверное, у меня помутнение, и я что-то не поняла, неправильно прочитала.

Сажусь, перечитываю второй раз, третий. Убеждаюсь, что нет, это действительно происходит.

А дальше ужас, паника. Антония, как ты могла???

Во второй книге квартета Фредерики Байетт по уровню жести превзошла Джорджа Мартина со Стивеном Кингом, а я ПОСЛЕ прочтения этой книги не спала ночь — мне было страшно. И интересно.

И естественно, я буду читать третью книгу, потому что ай да Байетт, ай да сами знаете!

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my second reading. After rereading The Virgin in the Garden for a book group, I vowed to read the whole quartet again. This one I think I liked more than the first reading.

It continues the story centered on the Potter family in the 1950ies. Stephanie has married the clergyman, Daniel, and is soon pregnant. She's acutely aware as she goes through her pregnancy of how much what is expected of her has shifted. She was a brilliant student, got a good Cambridge degree even though she'd chosen to go home to Yorkshire to teach at her old school, but now she's called "Mother" by all the nurses in the clinic and subjected to the physical and emotional indignities all women recognize as going along with institutions that oversee reproduction. For her first delivery she yearns for her Wordsworth which is in her bag and the nurses are too busy to get it for her; for her second delivery, she's smart enough to ensure she gets her books into the labor room.

Her marriage is complicated by her brother Marcus--after his breakdown in the previous novel and need to get away from his father, comes to live with her, as does her husband's selfish and critical mother.

In the meantime Frederica has gone to Cambridge (having successfully managed to lose her virginity beforehand) where she's anxious to be taken seriously as a scholar in an atmosphere where women are in a distinct minority--and assumed to be less than serious scholars. All of her friends are men, and sometimes her emotional or sexual needs take her in silly directions, but by and large she has a very successful university career without really understanding where she will go from there. She assumes, nonetheless, that it's about time for her to get married, without understanding how marriage and a career will work, even without understanding what kind of a husband she wants. It's not Frederica only who's confused; in the 1950ies, the way forward for an academically inclined woman is anything but clear. Woman scholars in the university don't seem much like women--to live restricted and isolated lives. But Stephanie's choices scare Frederica. Her mother's life, as the ineffective peacemaker to her volatile father, is also to be avoided.

As Byatt focuses on the contradictions plaguing academic women in the Fifties, there's a parallel drama focused on the artist van Gogh. Interestingly, the novel begins in a museum where Andrew Wedderburn (with whom the schoolgirl Frederica was in love) is celebrating his latest play, "The Yellow Room", the story of van Gogh (named for a brother who died) and his brother Theo who strives to keep him sane. The Virgin in the Garden, began in the National Portrait Gallery many years after the action in the book, where Wedderburn attends an event focused on a portrait of the first Queen Elizabeth about whom he wrote a successful verse drama at the time of the coronation of the second Elizabeth.

Then Stephanie dies in a freak accident at home, which companions more canny that her odious mother-in-law and disturbed brother might have been able to save her from. (I can't get out of my head, a comment Byatt has made in more than one interview, that belatedly she recognizes that the characters she's killed off in her fiction are those who represent herself.) Frederica reacts badly and surrenders to a suitor outside of the academic world, one with money and a country house and considerable sex appeal. She seems, like Stephanie, to have opened a door to sexual involvement and at the same time closed the door on her potential as a scholar.

It's the portrait of a woman for whom education is everything, but who still expects (and is expected to expect) marriage and family that attracts me to this series of novels. Less than a decade younger than Byatt's characters, I too lived with those contradictions.

[Guy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now that I'm two books in, the Frederica Potter novels are shaping up to be an interesting comparison piece, and a more female-centered counterbalance, for Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time, which I read last year and absolutely loved. Perhaps John Updike's Rabbit books make for a closer comparison structurally, also being a quartet with one appearing in each of four consecutive decades, and Byatt also makes reference to In Search of Lost Time fairly liberally throughout Still Life.

Whatever the case, Still Life really is excellent, and for my money a small step up from its predecessor The Virgin in the Garden. It's very dense, but never difficult, and although it wears its intellectual credentials on its sleeve, it gets away with it by doing so defiantly rather than smugly.

The only element that didn't work for me, and for which I have reluctantly lowered my overall rating, is the occasional direct interruption by the author to underscore certain key moments or veer into protracted digressions about art, literature, and philosophy of language. When these subjects are worked into the dialogue, or a character's inner monologue, I enjoy them very much (as in Possession, and indeed in most of this), but one gets the sense that rather than try to crowbar every thought and observation into the body of a novel, perhaps the author should also have written a small volume of essays at the same time. This is, however, a relatively minor blemish on the surface of an otherwise terrific novel which bodes well for the rest of the cycle.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Does this woman not have any humor? I think I'm finished with my enthusiasm for her lovely writing as she digresses into too many examinations of conversations/interests of the university students that are a yawn. The focus of this book seemed to me to be how women deal with their intelligence and life of the mind while tending to family, and job, always a complicated dance. The continuing observations of the effect of light, science of light, light in particular in Van Gogh's paintings were most interesting.

[Lesya Aleksandroff · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a real challenge, but it's worth it!

[Philip · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stephanie, Frederica and Marcus are different in age, different in temperament, have different interests and different preferences. Stephanie is very much the mother and homemaker. Frederica is the academic and she is more than merely studious. Marcus, well, he is confused, perhaps emotional, but focussed in the end, perhaps not.

Still Life by A S Byatt is part of a tetralogy of novels that deal with similar subject matter and characters. Still Life is a masterpiece of its kind, in that it visits upper-middle class life in England in the 1950s and, in doing so, charts, the preoccupations and predilections of its age. Personally, I grew up in 1950s England and because of an obvious class divide, I find I cannot associate with any of the experiences of these characters, having never taken a foreign holiday, never once eaten in an expensive restaurant, never had wine at the table and never met anyone who had been to Cambridge. This is not a criticism of A S Byatt’s Still Life, but it does include a limitation. The novel does chart lives in 1950s England, but it offers a particular viewpoint on that decade. This is a strength, not a weakness.

These characters are not representative of the kind of 1950s England that I knew, but they do represent a stratum of English society that writers like to write about. Perhaps that variety of Englishness is where most writers lived and thus, they are merely drawing from their own experience. In the case of A S Byatt, one feels that this is the case. Again, this is a strength of the writing, not a weakness.

In their own ways, each of the three young people that form the majority of the plot heads in a different, individual direction. Stephanie, for instance, goes against the wishes of her parents to choose a spouse, who is both a vicar and of a different persuasion from that of her parents. Frederica is academically gifted and goes to Cambridge, where she meets all kinds of intellectual types, playwrights, philosophers, litterateurs, and the like, some of them emigrés, some of them upper crust and mostly male. For Frederica, this is far from a problem because, despite her utterly intellectual approach to life, she spends most of her time thinking about getting laid. We may dress up our lives with intellectual considerations and moral complications, but deep down, we all work the same way.

Marcus, on the other hand, who does not figure at the same level to the same extent as the others in the text, is a butterfly. He is regularly alone, regularly pursuing his own interests, but also regularly unsure about what these might be. He is socially awkward and concentrates his attention on things that don’t talk back to him. He is not alone in these tendencies. Eventually, this inability to communicate directly and immediately causes him and others reason for remorse. But would it have made any difference?

Early in the story Frederica meets Alexander, who is writing a play about van Gogh. A S Byatt uses this to embroider the text with frequent references to colour, usually likening an appreciation of shade to an emotional state. This is wholly successful until the play is produced and a later obsession of Frederica’s dismisses it as banal. Here the writer may be suggesting that Frederica’s intellectual appreciation of ideas may be ruled by her immediate sexual goals. The point has remarkable consequences for anyone who claims to “think”.

Perhaps the most memorable passage in the book is Stephanie’s description of the process of giving birth. Again, we have something which is considered, analysed and expected that in reality moves with its own, largely uncontrolled momentum.

Still Life is a masterpiece of writing. It may present some readers with a hurdle that they feel they can’t jump in order to enter the mindsets of these middle-class intellectuals. But having made that jump to a new standpoint, life still looks pretty much the same.

[Haiying · Rating 5 out of 5]

布克奖得主，去年刚去世的A.S.Byatt被誉为近代英国50位最伟大作家之一。这本书是她女性4部曲的第二部。非常喜欢的一本书，人物都个性栩栩如生，代入感极强，同时穿插很多艺术和文学元素，包括静物描写，把书名发挥得是淋漓尽致。Byatt虽然通过静物描绘凸显了人的鲜活和不可预测性，但是两者在书中的完美融合，又让人体会到所谓静物，只是完全不同于动物生命的频率的存在，豁然打开我们人的眼界与世界的边界，从小小的静物反而体会到大大的自我的渺小，很神奇。

近两个月忙到跳脚，身体和脑袋同时被长时间挤压的情况多年来很少了，能静下心来读完这本书觉得真好。这个世界上每个人都有压力，有这么一位作者看透女性面对特有的社会生活世俗压力下不同的生命轨迹，想抱一抱她，表达我的感激之情。

感觉Byatt带有浓厚英国作家气息，我隐隐有读George Elliot 的“Middlemarch”的感觉。她的第三部书名“巴别塔”。同为深厚的剑桥背景，我猜匡灵秀的那本“巴别塔”有致敬Byatt的意味。也许有机会再读一下Byatt版的巴别塔。

“有时候会遇见惊喜的。你必须随时有心理准备，有可能就在明天，或者后天。”

[Ksenia · Rating 5 out of 5]

this was fucking crazy