Book Review: STILL LIVES by Maria Hummel

Title: Still Lives

Author: Maria Hummel
Publisher: Quercus Books
Read: October 2018

Expected publication: out now

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟

Book Description:

Kim Lord is an avant-garde figure, feminist icon, and agent provocateur in the L.A. art scene. Her groundbreaking new exhibition Still Lives is comprised of self-portraits depicting herself as famous, murdered women—the Black Dahlia, Chandra Levy, Nicole Brown Simpson, among many others—and the works are as compelling as they are disturbing, implicating a culture that is too accustomed to violence against women.

As the city’s richest art patrons pour into the Rocque Museum’s opening night, all the staff, including editor Maggie Richter, hope the event will be enough to save the historic institution’s flailing finances. Except Kim Lord never shows up to her own gala. Fear mounts as the hours and days drag on and Lord remains missing. Suspicion falls on the up-and-coming gallerist Greg Shaw Ferguson, who happens to be Maggie’s ex. A rogue’s gallery of eccentric art world figures could also have motive for the act, and as Maggie gets drawn into her own investigation of Lord’s disappearance, she’ll come to suspect all of those closest to her.

Set against a culture that often fetishizes violence, Still Lives is a page-turning exodus into the art world’s hall of mirrors, and one woman’s journey into the belly of an industry flooded with money and secrets.

My musings:

I’m always on the lookout for books with unusual settings, or settings I am unfamiliar with, so Still Lives fell squarely in that court. With a background in the big city art scene, I felt like an alien who had landed on a different planet, eager to explore a new world. I must also say that I absolutely loved the title of this one – it is so clever. Still lives, as in art pieces, as in murder, as in corpses and lives being “stilled”. *clap, clap*

When you think of a still life, the artistic kind, corpses aren’t what immediately spring to mind. There may be a strategically placed apple, with the light and the shade just so, or a vase of lovely flowers, or some carefully arranged glassware. Imagine an instagram feed pre internet – idyllic domestic scenes, even though clever artists arranged the objects so there was a hidden meaning behind the scene. I remember doing art classes at school and sighing in exasperation as we were asked to paint yet another fruit bowl. But oh, who would have thought that it would make the perfect basis of a thriller? Because Kim Lord, artist on the L.A. art scene, offers viewers a completely new type of still lives: paintings where she depicts herself in the poses of famous female murder victims to highlight the sensationalising of violence against women in the media. This in itself could be disturbing enough, but Kim fails to show up at the opening night of her exhibition, which is a big no-no. Fears mount as it becomes evident it is not a stunt pulled by the artist to garner attention, but that no one has seen her alive for quite some time ....

For art lovers, who can seamlessly enter this strange new world, understand the lingo and are familiar with artists, galleries and all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes, this book may not be quite the same alien world it was for me. Whilst I loved the whole concept of the still lives, I admit that I got lost in the pages like a foreign tourist without a map at times, not only struggling with the language but also the whole culture. Gaping in fascination was not the same as getting truly invested in the story, which took a bit of the thrill and enjoyment away for me, as I was too busy trying to navigate my way through the multitude of characters and divergent plot lines.

Overall, I enjoyed the story and was intrigued by the whole premise, but it lacked a climax for me, instead gently meandering along as seen through the eyes of Maggie, the PA who is trying to work out what has happened to Kim. I really enjoyed the little secret messages in Kim’s paintings that Maggie picks up in her investigation – this kind of breadcrumb trail of clues was my favourite part of the story. I think that if the book had focused more on the solving of the mystery than the politics of the art world, it would have worked much better for me. However, this slow paced mystery was beautifully written and certainly had a unique concept, which is quite hard to find these days.

Thank you to Netgalley and Quercus Books for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.