Katherine Packert Burke Still Life review, recensie en informatie over de inhoud van de queer roman van de Amerikaanse auteur. Op 9 oktober 2024 verschijnt bij W.W. Norton de roman van de uit de Verenigde Staten afkomstige schrijfster Katherine Packert Burke. Hier lees je informatie over de inhoud van de roman, de auteur en over de uitgave. Een Nederlandse vertaling van de roman is niet verkrijgbaar.

Katherine Packert Burke Still Life review, recensie en informatie

• “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.” (James Frankie Thomas, author of Idlewild)
• “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)

Still Life

• Auteur: Katherine Packert Burke (Verenigde Staten)
• Soort boek: Amerikaanse queer roman
• Taal: Engels
• Uitgever: W.W. Norton
• Verschijnt: 9 oktober 2024
• Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook
• Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol / Libris

Katherine Packert Burke Still Life review, recensie en informatie

• “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.” (James Frankie Thomas, author of Idlewild)
• “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)

Flaptekst van de queer roman van 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, 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.

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.

Bijpassende boeken

• Nieuwe Amerikaanse romans
• Queer romans