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by Maria Hummel
Set against a culture that often fetishizes violence, Still Lives is a page-turning exodus into the art world's hall of mirrors, and one woman's journey into the belly of an industry flooded with money and secrets.
Kim Lord is an avant-garde figure, feminist icon, and agent provocateur in the L.A. art scene. Her groundbreaking new exhibition Still Lives is comprised of self-portraits depicting herself as famous, murdered women - the Black Dahlia, Chandra Levy, Nicole Brown Simpson, among many others - and the works are as compelling as they are disturbing, implicating a culture that is too accustomed to violence against women.
As the city's richest art patrons pour into the Rocque Museum's opening night, all the staff, including editor Maggie Richter, hope the event will be enough to save the historic institution's flailing finances.
Except Kim Lord never shows up to her own gala.
Fear mounts as the hours and days drag on and Lord remains missing. Suspicion falls on the up-and-coming gallerist Greg Shaw Ferguson, who happens to be Maggie's ex. A rogue's gallery of eccentric art world figures could also have motive for the act, and as Maggie gets drawn into her own investigation of Lord's disappearance, she'll come to suspect all of those closest to her.
"Starred Review. Hummel builds visceral intimacy around 'women's oppressive anxiety about [their] ultimate vulnerability' in this often uncomfortable tale about the media's fetishistic fascination with the violent murders of beautiful women." - Publishers Weekly
"Hummel crafts a shrewd and suspenseful inquiry into womanhood and the dark side of the art market, punctuated by striking variations on identity, portraiture, and 'still lives.'" - Booklist
"With deliberate pacing increasing the tension, the story line revolving around the public's fascination with graphic crimes against women serves as a chilling reminder that such violence continues to occur in many forms." - Library Journal
"This is a whip-smart mystery and a moving meditation on the consumption of female bodies all rolled into one." - Kirkus
"Still Lives [is] at once profound and suspenseful, and while the plot kept me up nights (the ending had me gasping in surprise!), the book as a whole asks important questions about art and representation and how we, as a culture, objectify and endanger and victimize women." - Edan Lepucki, author of Woman No. 17 and the York Times bestselling California
"There's nothing I like better than a well-written page-turner about the art world...Flawed characters abound as do clever plots and subplots along with irresistible peeks into hidden chambers of the L.A. art scene. Riveting." - B.A. Shapiro, New York Times bestselling author of The Art Forger and The Muralist
"A gripping mystery set inside the world of contemporary art, Still Lives is the kind of book we all hope to stumble upon: the perfect combination of terrific prose and compelling storytelling. Maria Hummel has delivered the smartest, most original page-turner I've read in a long time." - Maggie Shipstead, author of Astonish Me and the New York Times bestselling Seating Arrangements
"While her protagonist investigates the disappearance of a major artist, Maria Hummel runs a shrewd parallel investigation into culture, gender, violence, and art. Still Lives is a propulsive, carefully crafted mystery with real thematic focus and heft." - Chris Bachelder, author of The Throwback Special, finalist for the National Book Award
"As gritty and glittering as the L.A. art world it depicts, Maria Hummel's latest novel soars into the sun-swept heights of fame and beauty, then plunges us into violence...Intelligent, vivid, and impeccably paced, this thrilling novel forces us to confront how dangerous art can be." - Kirstin Valdez Quade, author of Night at the Fiestas
"In Still Lives, Maria Hummel delivers not only a deftly plotted mystery, but also a rich and timely meditation on violence, authenticity, and the cool and deceptive exteriors of modern Los Angeles." - Jim Gavin, author of Middle Men
This information about Still Lives was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
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Photo: Melanie Abrams
Maria Hummel is a novelist and poet. Her books include Lesson in Red, a follow-up to Still Lives, a Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine pick, a Book of the Month Club pick, and BBC Culture Best Book of 2018; Motherland, a San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year; House and Fire, winner of the APR/Honickman Poetry Prize; and Goldenseal, published in 2024.
The winner of a Stegner Fellowship, Bread Loaf Fellowship, and Pushcart Prize, Hummel has been praised for fiction that is "savvy and lyrical" (Wall Street Journal) and "deeply affecting" (Los Angeles Times), and poetry that is "stunning… simple and deep, brimming with love and pain" (The Rumpus). Her other awards include a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize, the Penelope Niven Creative Nonfiction Award, and fellowships to Squaw ...
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