Still Life with Tornado
By A.S. King
Publication Year: 2017
Type: Fiction
Genre: magical realism
Read on 2020-04-10
View additional specs on this book in Muhan’s 2020 Reading Survey ➞
★★☆☆☆
I really loved Dig, the first A.S. King book I ever read, but this one was really very mediocre. I’m not really sure why but it just dragged, I didn’t care about any of the characters, and the contemplative bits on what is art and originality got more and more irritating.
The protagonist and narrator is a 16 year old girl who stops going to school and becomes obsessed with the idea of only doing things that are absolutely original. She does silly things like skip class because it’s “not original” and pretending to change her legal name to Umbrella. The latter half of the book becomes more of a family drama and shifts tone and themes pretty abruptly.
The story is told non-chronologically across two timelines, present-day and a family vacation to Mexico when she was 9. The mom, a nurse, has her own chapters which read like her inner thoughts/diary interspersed throughout. Magical realism element comes in with the protagonist starting to encountering her selves at various other ages - 9, 23, 40, who interact with other people in her 16 year old life.
It’s a highly crafted book but I just really didn’t care..
See me talk about this book in this TBR!
