num_pages: 368
description: Frederica Potter, 'doomed to be intelligent', plunges into Cambridge University life greedy for knowledge, sex and love. In Yorkshire her sister Stephanie has abandoned academe for the cosy frustration of the family. Alexander Wedderburn, now in London, struggles to make a play about Van Gogh, whose art and tragic life give the novel its central leitmotiv.In this sequel to her much praised "The Virgin in the Garden", A.S. Byatt illuminates the inevitable conflicts between ambition and domesticity, confinement and self-fulfilment, while providing a subtle yet incisive observation of the intellectual and cultural life in England during the 1950s.
language: English
title: Still Life
titlecomplete: Still Life (The Frederica Quartet, #2)
genres: Historical, Literature, 20th Century, Literary Fiction, Novels, Modern, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Contemporary, British Literature
ratings_count: 2401
series: The Frederica Quartet
publisher: Penguin