Overview
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, chronicling the lives of three women-one cis, two trans, all forever entwined. Edith was a bumbling ""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 the musical backdrop of their fledgling adulthood. When Edith decides to leave behind the East Coast for graduate school, she begins a yearslong journey away from the person she loves most and toward a hazy new understanding of who she will become. In the present, Edith visits Boston feeling like a failure of a writer, a failure of a girl, and wracked with guilt over Val's death. Val, the intrepid wanderer, had drifted in and out of Edith's life, arriving in Texas with estrogen pills and wisdom from a life on the road. A sometimes lover, sometimes trans mentor, Val was everything Tessa wasn't and everything Edith needed. Home alone in Texas, she is left loveless and exhausted as the state slowly chips away at trans rights. Was Val's fatal car crash Edith's fault? Would she have stayed put if Edith had loved her better? Katherine Packert Burke's debut novel unfolds like a rusty pocketknife, jagged and lacerating. Infused with pop culture, cigarettes, and Sondheim, Still Life traces the lives of three friends, authentic and evolving, loving and cruel, here and gone, to craft a tableau of modern womanhood.
Full Product Details
Author: Katherine Packert Burke
Publisher: WW Norton & Co
Imprint: WW Norton & Co
Dimensions:
Width: 16.00cm
, Height: 2.50cm
, Length: 23.90cm
Weight: 0.436kg
ISBN: 9781324076360
ISBN 10: 1324076364
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 13 September 2024
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Out of stock
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.
Reviews
"""Still Life is vibrantly, brilliantly alive – by turns steely and delicate, wintry and warm, tart and bittersweet, elegiac and joyous. Just like the music and lyrics of Stephen Sondheim (this novel’s patron saint, quietly ever-present), Katherine Packert Burke’s writing is cerebral and exquisitely precise yet brimming with feeling. Still Life captures the way certain people can stay with you – even if they leave you halfway through the woods – and I already know that Edith, Tessa, and Val will stay with me. I can’t wait for other readers to meet them."" -- James Frankie Thomas, author of Idlewild ""Katherine Packert Burke has written such a warm book on red-state trans loneliness and the very real loves, cis and trans, that circle it. I love the jokes and nicknames, the riffs on Cezanne, Sondheim, and Gossip Girl, and the care with which its three core characters face their losses and departures. I loved them--and more importantly, Burke does too. You'll feel it."" -- Jeanne Thornton, author of Summer Fun ""Katherine Packert Burke’s Still Life is everything you want from a künstlerroman: smart, sexy, funny, sly, and exceptionally queer. With biting insights and heartbreaking attention, this debut captures the daunting thrill of becoming an artist while becoming yourself."" -- Isle McElroy, author of People Collide ""A stunning elegy to all the lives we cannot live and a celebration of becoming yourself. Katherine Packert Burke vividly captures the nuance, heartbreak, and wonder of traveling your one path—the torture of what ifs, the deep bodily pleasure of community, and the ongoing adventure of self-knowledge. Throughout Still Life, I felt so close to Edith, and I’ll be thinking of her for a long, long time."" -- Alyssa Songsiridej, author of Little Rabbit"
"""Still Life is vibrantly, brilliantly alive – by turns steely and delicate, wintry and warm, tart and bittersweet, elegiac and joyous. Just like the music and lyrics of Stephen Sondheim (this novel’s patron saint, quietly ever-present), Katherine Packert Burke’s writing is cerebral and exquisitely precise yet brimming with feeling. Still Life captures the way certain people can stay with you – even if they leave you halfway through the woods – and I already know that Edith, Tessa, and Val will stay with me. I can’t wait for other readers to meet them."" -- James Frankie Thomas, author of Idlewild ""Katherine Packert Burke has written such a warm book on red-state trans loneliness and the very real loves, cis and trans, that circle it. I love the jokes and nicknames, the riffs on Cezanne, Sondheim, and Gossip Girl, and the care with which its three core characters face their losses and departures. I loved them--and more importantly, Burke does too. You'll feel it."" -- Jeanne Thornton, author of Summer Fun ""Katherine Packert Burke’s Still Life is everything you want from a künstlerroman: smart, sexy, funny, sly, and exceptionally queer. With biting insights and heartbreaking attention, this debut captures the daunting thrill of becoming an artist while becoming yourself."" -- Isle McElroy, author of People Collide"
Author Information
Katherine Packert Burke is a graduate of the Clarion Writer's Workshop in San Diego and the MFA program at the University of Alabama. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.