“Kim Lord asked her audiences to question the ethics of their own gaze”
RW book club has a platter ready of genres to serve you with. Their choices bring in a variety of novels unfolding their own unique stories. Everything I have read from their collection has been an amazing unique journey in its own kind. Still Lives was no different.
The crowd is pouring in, intrigued to lay eyes on of Kim Lord’s distressing new collection of art, Still Lives; Paintings consisting of self-portraits, illustrating herself as famous female murder victims. Everything’s coming together. The paintings are up for display; the gallery is all set to open the doors to the event to it’s city’s elite, the only missing piece in the puzzle is the artist herself, Kim Lord.
Maggie a young journalist, moved to Los Angeles with her dreams, ambitions and boyfriend Greg. Now working at the Rocque Museum as an editor finds herself being sucked into the mysterious disappearance of the artist. Is it just the curiosity of how the events are unfolding in front of her or the fact that Greg was dating Kim Lord and is now a prime suspect in the investigation? Maggie starts her own quest to find answers, hoping they would eventually lead up to finding Lord.
“What happened between us still mystifies me: how two lovers can move to a city, and the city itself wraps around them like vines, pulling them apart, pushing them towards others”
As Maggie starts to discover the signs within the paintings, she realizes there’s a lot more behind the wounded women than meets the eye. She starts to question Greg’s relationship with Kim. If he wasn’t the person she thought he was.
Kim lord is known for her troubling and disturbing yet radical artwork. Yet, when she disappears, makes the people’s thoughts wander to the obvious, if this traction is what she was looking for. Was it all setup to drive in a larger audience or has something seriously happened to her?
Hummel gives us a fascinating insight LA’s shimmering art world and the behind the scene workings of museums and galleries. Though the book has a very engaging start, it eventually starts to flatten in the middle and the story starts to relax, loosing its thrilling charm. The characters have the same affect; you don’t get too deep in about the protagonists to get invested in them. However, it quickly picks up its pace in the 2ndhalf, leaving us with a gripping end.
“it would expose us, it would expose most women’s oppressive anxiety about our ultimate vulnerability, a fear both rational and irrational, like the fear of the footsteps behind you at night, magnified a hundred times.”