I'm in the habit of reading something from the non-fiction shelves during the day, and a novel at night, and so when memory stirred as I was reading Stella Bowen's autobiography Drawn from Life, I hunted out Francesca Kay's An Equal Stillness from the TBR. This novel explores the same dilemma in fiction that featured in real life in the Sensational Snippet that I posted from Bowen's book. As the bookcover blurb says: Artist, lover, wife, mother: can one woman be them all? To be more specific, how do women reconcile being a loving, supportive spouse with the need to advance their own careers, especially if they have a special gift?

An Equal Stillness is a novel but it reads like an intimate biography, charting an artist's professional and personal life from a close perspective. It's clear-eyed and not blind to the subject's faults, but it's gentle and not quite detached. It's not until the very end of the book that the reason for this is revealed, though some readers may guess it beforehand. What they may also not guess is that this is not a fictionalised retelling of a real artist's life... Jennet Mallow is an entirely fictional creation and using the form of a biography is the author's way of making the story convincing.

Jennet was born in England's north, in the fictional village of Litton Kirkdale in the upper valley of the River Aire, to a mother disappointed by life. Lorna wanted to escape her parents, and—this is not quite as cynical as it sounds—she married, fully expecting the man to die on the battlefields of WW1. Her father had died when she was 13, and her brother had died at Ypres. The people she loved had died, and she expected that Richard would die too. But he didn't, and he didn't want to stay in the army despite his family's traditions. He retreats to a quiet, humble life as a cleric, with a wife frustrated by his lack of ambition and their dull domestic life.

Somehow, from this blighted family, Jennet becomes an artist of renown. As a child she made art in a hidden space behind her bed, and untaught, she wins a scholarship to an art school in London in 1945. Thriving in the cultural milieu she marries another artist, David Heaton, older than her and already becoming successful. But before long she gives birth to a son called Ben, and her art takes second place to domestic life. When they go to Spain because they are fed up with dreary postwar England, she—pregnant again—is content with her role:

Those first few months in Santiago stayed in her mind as a time of happiness, and they mark the start of her most fecund periods as an artist.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2020/05/25/an-equal-stillness-by-francesca-kay/

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I loved this book and wanted to return to it. The writing is lyrical and beautiful and the art descriptions so convincing I found myself googling them to find they and the artist were a figment of the author's imagination. A book that took me by surprise. ( )

Novel about the sources of creativity. Told is the story of a woman painter, Jennet Mallow (1924-2000) from her youthfull discovery of her love for drawing, till the end of her eventfull, passionate and dramatic life. Described are her childhood, young womanhood, relations with her father (crippled by memories of devasting wars), her disappointed mother, her fat sister, her art schooling, husband, familylife, children and lovers. And foremost her drive to paint and the concentration she need to succeed. A good deal of the book is spent on the description of the paintings. The story is loosely modelled on the life of British sculptor Barbara Hepworth and her circle. The First half of the novel is a good read. Beautiful descriptions about form and colour, but then the concept starts to rankle and looses her credibility. Still I found it a readable book about a subject I love; painting in form, colour and substance. ( )

Really enjoyed this book, well written, good plot, believable with lots to say. ( )