"Stark and compelling . . . Rigorously unsentimental yet suffused with
emotion: possibly the best work yet from an always stimulating
writer."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Katharine Weber's Still Life With Monkey is a beautifully wrought
paean of praise for the ordinary pleasures taken for granted by the
able-bodied. In precise and often luminous prose, with intelligence and
tenderness, Weber's latest novel examines the question of what makes a
life worth living."--Washington Post
"[A] deeply but delicately penetrating novel."--New York Times Book
Review
"Weber's unsentimental and poignant examination of what does and does
not make life worth living is a heartbreaking triumph."--Publishers
Weekly (starred review)
"A brilliantly crafted novel, brimming with heart."--Tayari Jones,
author of An American Marriage
Duncan Wheeler is a successful architect who savors the quotidian
pleasures in life until a car accident leaves him severely paralyzed and
haunted by the death of his young assistant. Now, Duncan isn't sure what
there is left to live for, when every day has become "a broken series of
unsuccessful gestures."
Duncan and his wife, Laura, find themselves in conflict as Duncan's will
to live falters. Laura grows desperate to help him. An art conservator
who has her own relationship to the repair of broken things, Laura
brings home a highly trained helper monkey--a tufted capuchin named
Ottoline--to assist Duncan with basic tasks. Duncan and Laura fall for
this sweet, comical, Nutella-gobbling little creature, and Duncan's life
appears to become more tolerable, fuller, and funnier. Yet the question
persists: Is it enough?
Katharine Weber is a masterful observer of humanity, and Still Life
with Monkey, full of tenderness and melancholy, explores the conflict
between the will to live and the desire to die.
