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A review by brice_mo
Still Life by Katherine Packert Burke
2.5
Thanks to NetGalley and W.W. Norton & Company for the ARC!
Katherine Packert Burke’s Still Life is a solid debut novel with ambitions that occasionally feel lost amidst other narrative distractions.
Still Life is the story of a trans woman—Edith—trying to unify her life’s “before” and “after”—the years pre- and post-transition. Her pre-transition life is filled with friendships, romances, and formative moments, but how does one honor what was intentionally left behind? How do those feelings, relationships, and events change when they’ve been re-mediated through a changed body?
There are incredible moments where the instability of identity compounds the already-difficult realities of relationship—scenes in which we see the impossibility of tidy emotional categorization. Thematically this suggests an interesting exploration of the latent ambiguities of found-family intimacy, especially the permeable borders between platonic and romantic love. One can’t help but applaud Burke’s ability and willingness to sustain this tension across the entirety of the book.
The question, however, is whether this tension can sustain the entirety of a book.
I’m not so sure.
All the shared histories and inside jokes feel real, but unfortunately so—they ring as factual but untrue, the kind of anecdotes that would be met with blank, disinterested stares if you told them to acquaintances. They seem excised from an actual life and clumsily grafted in here, and it leads to many uncomfortable moments in which the reader wonders if Burke is simply including details from her own life to fill out the story.
Similarly, Still Life isn’t a long book, but it overstays its welcome by a good hundred pages, largely due to how often Burke diverts her attention from emotional complexity and devotes it to the self-absorbed petulance of academia. Much of the book waxes intellectual in a way that would feel meaningful in a graduate seminar, but it’s absurd, esoteric, and self-indulgent in any other medium. I suspect that readers’ enjoyment will depend on whether academia is a shared experience—it’s so estranging otherwise, and I say that as someone who loved my graduate seminars. Each time I found myself excited by mention of, say, a literary theorist, it also felt like an obvious detriment to the narrative.
Ultimately, I’m not sure how much these critiques matter because Burke’s prose is excellent. Even when the story seems to be fraying at its seams, it’s held together by her truly remarkable descriptive language. There are moments that are so emotionally specific or visually singular that I found myself re-reading them—flirtations with poetry. This is an author who knows the strengths of her voice; she just might need a little more time refining them.
Still Life never quite works on its own merits, but it does feel like a preview of an exciting literary career. Katherine Packert Burke’s meticulous attention to every word is magnetic, and I look forward to seeing what she does next.
Katherine Packert Burke’s Still Life is a solid debut novel with ambitions that occasionally feel lost amidst other narrative distractions.
Still Life is the story of a trans woman—Edith—trying to unify her life’s “before” and “after”—the years pre- and post-transition. Her pre-transition life is filled with friendships, romances, and formative moments, but how does one honor what was intentionally left behind? How do those feelings, relationships, and events change when they’ve been re-mediated through a changed body?
There are incredible moments where the instability of identity compounds the already-difficult realities of relationship—scenes in which we see the impossibility of tidy emotional categorization. Thematically this suggests an interesting exploration of the latent ambiguities of found-family intimacy, especially the permeable borders between platonic and romantic love. One can’t help but applaud Burke’s ability and willingness to sustain this tension across the entirety of the book.
The question, however, is whether this tension can sustain the entirety of a book.
I’m not so sure.
All the shared histories and inside jokes feel real, but unfortunately so—they ring as factual but untrue, the kind of anecdotes that would be met with blank, disinterested stares if you told them to acquaintances. They seem excised from an actual life and clumsily grafted in here, and it leads to many uncomfortable moments in which the reader wonders if Burke is simply including details from her own life to fill out the story.
Similarly, Still Life isn’t a long book, but it overstays its welcome by a good hundred pages, largely due to how often Burke diverts her attention from emotional complexity and devotes it to the self-absorbed petulance of academia. Much of the book waxes intellectual in a way that would feel meaningful in a graduate seminar, but it’s absurd, esoteric, and self-indulgent in any other medium. I suspect that readers’ enjoyment will depend on whether academia is a shared experience—it’s so estranging otherwise, and I say that as someone who loved my graduate seminars. Each time I found myself excited by mention of, say, a literary theorist, it also felt like an obvious detriment to the narrative.
Ultimately, I’m not sure how much these critiques matter because Burke’s prose is excellent. Even when the story seems to be fraying at its seams, it’s held together by her truly remarkable descriptive language. There are moments that are so emotionally specific or visually singular that I found myself re-reading them—flirtations with poetry. This is an author who knows the strengths of her voice; she just might need a little more time refining them.
Still Life never quite works on its own merits, but it does feel like a preview of an exciting literary career. Katherine Packert Burke’s meticulous attention to every word is magnetic, and I look forward to seeing what she does next.