Francesca Kay - An Equal Stillness

Review by Babs Simspon on show August 2009
This book got the author Winner of the Orange award for New Writers - and most deservedly so.
This is an extraordinary novel, written in the form of a biography. It is utterly compelling and I literally didn't want to put it down (cliched though that might sound).
The biography is of Jennet Mallow, a woman who grew up with a disillusioned mother and a father haunted by memories of war, to become a much feted and gifted artist. At a very young age she meets a handsome, enigmatic painter, David Heaton, whom she marries and lives with firstly in Spain then in London.
As her career flourishes, she has children and a very difficult home life with a husband who drinks to excess and indeed to madness, but somehow she carries on, although her painting eventually has to take a back seat.
During a long stay in St Ives, she meets the love of her life, but the affair is doomed and eventually she returns to her first love and produces some of the finest work of her life.
This is the most amazing book. I cannot do it justice in a review. I found myself totally absorbed both in Jennet and her paintings. The writing is quite extraordinary, beautiful and lyrical, and is truly impressive, especially as this is the author's first novel. I also found it quite hard to believe that this is a novel, rather than a biography of someone whom i had not heard.
PLEASE read it. It is glorious.