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.

A. S. Byatt is one of those vintage authors who gets better and better with each of their books. In this earlier works, I feel partly disconcerted, and delighted for finding out some of the sources which she later used in Possession and The Children's book. The mention and description of the Boggle Hole is just one example.
The plot itself is not very cohesive. At least, one cannot make a coherent summary of it unless one reads it through, after The Virgin in the Garden. She said: "This is a boo More...

Definitely well written but it came across as verbose and pretentious.
It read as if the author wanted to show off her Cambridge education with various references to authors and artists such as D H Lawrence and Vincent Van Gogh on whose life she concentrates a fair bit, even making him the subject of a play that one of the characters in the book is writing. The main theme of the novel seems to be the contrasting lives of two sisters, Stephanie who has deserted academia in favour of domesticity an More...

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 More...

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 More...

From other reviews I've read on here, people think that anything after The Virgin in the Garden A Novel is all downhill. After reading Still Life, I'm unfortunately inclined to agree.

The narration is as pretentious as ever. Before it was easier to ignore or completely disregard references, if your like me, and have never read Proust or Woodsworth. But part of the essence of the series it seems is the characters drive to continue to grow intellectually. It gets old quick as they go on page after More...

I didn't realize this book was the second in a series until I was halfway through it. Perhaps I should have read the first book first. Parts of this were fantastic stories with great characters - Frederica is at the cusp of the sexual revolution and one of the few females at Cambridge, figuring herself out. Stephanie has pushed aside her Cambridge education and is dealing with domesticity only to be forced to deal with the family psychological outcasts. The minor characters develop too and becom More...

This was such a peculiar read. Huge swathes of analytical blah I had to skip over because I simply couldn't be bothered with it, while other passages struck to my very core. Frederica's exploits at Cambridge reminded me why I could never have comtemplated an academic life, with all the intellectual one-upmanship it entails. While with Stephanie, I was able to share just what I may have lost (and gained) in becoming a mother.



The omnipresence of the author was, on a first reading, quite intrusive More...

Just finished my second reading of this wonderful stand-alone novel by one of my favorite authors. The characters, male or female are fully formed, the language is precise, yet poetic and less than a story with a plot, it's a beautiful painting in words. Byatt compares visual and literary arts, their strengths and limitations and clearly has a deep love and understanding of both. You don't have to have read Elliot or Wordsworth or Proust to appreciate this book, but it helps to be familiar with More...

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 mos More...

A. S. Byatt write gorgeous, thoroughly uncomfortable novels that I feel unable to review. There is a lot going on in this book about art, including the inherent limitedness of any artistic depiction and the arrogant, human desire to categorize and describe the world. Most of that went over my head, though, and, instead, it was the conflict women face between family and career that drew me in. I sympathized strongly between both Frederica and Stephanie and the inability of either of them balance More...

Reading through the reviews on goodreads, I'm interested by how much this book divides readers. (My favourite comment, by the way, was the person who described it as a 'perfect gift for an expectant woman'. In the book, there are three mothers: Daniel's mother, a ghastly, needy woman, about as welcome in the house as cancer; lost lonely frozen Winifred, who can't relate to any of her three children; and Stephanie, 'sunk in biology', struggling to keep her intellect alive as it drowns in the swam More...

The second entry in 'The Frederica Quartet' seems somehow more relevantly narrated under that name; in other words, Frederica becomes, if not the central figure of the novel, at least the most fleshed out and compelling, to my mind. The other Potters-Stephanie and Marcus-as well as Daniel and Alexander remain integral to the familial drama that began in The Virgin in the Garden, though I felt these characters seemed to expand outward rather than develop in particularly new directions.

Stephanie a More...

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 i More...

A well written and rather highbrow book which should appeal to english language/literature students and anyone interested in writing and linguistics. Unfortunately I didn't find the book to be one of those that you can't put down. However, I wanted to plough through it and I thought it a good book. I couldn't quite get the link/connection between the leading characters and Van Gogh, it didn't quite gel. I found the jumping from character and situation within each chapter a distraction and at one More...

i have to say upfront that i found this book (and its predecessor the virgin in the garden) difficult but have loved them too. its been a long time since i have read something on this scale. its made a difference i think doing a creative writing degree as i can see as byatt use of metafiction and intertextuality etc, but still a wonderful cast of characters. i am a very character driven reader. starting on the third of the trilogy babel tower now.

A.S. Byatt amazes me. I read this book ten years ago and didn't get it at all. Now I can't get enough of her. This book is very dark and sometimes intellectually mesmerizing. It's easy to get lost and I had to reread paragraphs on a number of occasions. But it's totally worth it. I walked away from this reading of Still Life with my head full of ideas and questions. And I really love the characters, even when they're being totally unlovable.

I'm beginning to get that A.S. Byatt's books are generally odd. Instead of including only the story of what her characters are doing, she also includes some characters' intellectual preoccupations. Interesting, she includes Stephanie's intellectual preoccupation with Wordsworth, though Stephanie left the academy to marry and have a child. She also includes playwright Alexander's intellectual and creative preoccupation with Van Gogh (a lot more of this). But the intellectual preoccupations of the More...

Perhaps because I had read the earlier of the Frederica books, I found this one easier to get into. Both "Virgin in the Garden" and "The Children's Book" I found quite dense and difficult. She really is a phenomenal author, and the ending is heartbreaking because you feel so deeply about the characters, despite the fact that she hasn't made any of them very lovable.

I wish I could write like that.

This novel is by the same woman who wrote "Possession" and is very literary and artistic, as well as telling a compelling story about a family in England--mostly in the 1950's. A lot of Vincent Van Gogh's life and writings are woven into the story. The title could refer to the artist's "still life" paintings, or perhaps to life it self--and that there is still life--no matter what happens.

Just re-read this second Frederica Potter book, in which Frederica, newly liberated of her virginity, goes to Cambridge to have the life of the mind and the life of men that she'd so desired back in school. Her sister, Stephanie, is pregnant with her first child. Their brother Marcus seems deeply damaged by a breakdown. And Alexander Wedderburn, the brilliant scholar and playwright of Frederica's prior obsession, is noodling away on a play about Vincent Van Gogh.

Byatt's weaving of Vincent's colo More...

This was a strange book. Nowhere near as brilliant as Possession, but interesting in its own right. I enjoyed the descriptions of human experience. Every now and then I came across something I hadn't ever heard described so well. Also, every now and then the author spoke up and talked about what she was trying to do with her book and what was and wasn't working, which was extremely weird. I don't like books written with some kind of gimmick or experimental approach, and I felt like this one comp More...

Initially dull story continuing Frederica and Stephanie's lives from the Virgin in the Garden. Mainly domestic scenes with Stephanie expecting, pregnancy and childbirth in 1950's England. Then the ending .... packed a real punch, very moving.

I enjoyed this book, though others in my book group did not. I had to push myself to keep going at times - the story unfolds backwards, and keeping track of the characters is challenging, and the dialogue is thick with references. Much of the novel takes place in Oxford, and the author is compelled to do a lot of intellectual showing off. Fun Fact. A.S. Byatt and Margaret Drabble are sisters who do not get along, and who apparently have not spoken in years. One wonders if the sisters in the nove More...

I want to like A.S. Byatt, really I do. And I do love Possession and Angels and Insects. But Still Life was too still, too didactic. I wanted to like the Potter sisters and feel for their situations, but they just irritated me.

I never really cared for the "Frederica" characters, but always love the language of Byatt. From a language/metaphore level, now that I have children of my own this book worked for me a lot better than it did when I first read it.

Brilliant.

I have to say, I'm still befuddled by people who don't like to read or think about books about people who like to read books and think.

Watch for Byatt's own intrusions to remark on her craft, Alexander Wedderburn's meditations on the phrase 'Still Life,' Frederica and Marcus and Byatt wondering at various points, and often together, about the nature of metaphor.

A perfect gift for expectant mothers.

I don't think I realized this was 2/4 when I started it. Nor does it encourage me to want to read the other 3. This book is really well written, very cerebral, laced with educational bits about things I'm not well-versed in, and overall, not so terribly engaging until the last 50 pages. Thus, it took me a month to read it.

On the other hand, it's a book about intelligent people struggling with being cerebral, with doubt, and love, and religion, and feminism in its practical elements. Which is be More...

I am bound to love everything written by Byatt, but didn't adore this quite as much as Possession or the Children's Book. Some of the theory discursions were a little too long, and I actively disliked the moments when she broke the fourth wall. But overall it was still wonderful.