“[A] wise tale about second chances, starting over, and going after what is most important in life.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
Still Life with Bread Crumbs begins with an imagined gunshot and ends with a new tin roof. Between the two is a wry and knowing portrait of Rebecca Winter, a photographer whose work made her an unlikely heroine for many women. Her career is now descendent, her bank balance shaky, and she has fled the city for the middle of nowhere. There she discovers, in a tree stand with a roofer named Jim Bates, that what she sees through a camera lens is not all there is to life.
Brilliantly written, powerfully observed, Still Life with Bread Crumbs is a deeply moving and often very funny story of unexpected love, and a stunningly crafted journey into the life of a woman, her heart, her mind, her days, as she discovers that life is a story with many levels, a story that is longer and more exciting than she ever imagined.
“[A] wise tale about second chances, starting over, and going after what is most important in life.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
Still Life with Bread Crumbs begins with an imagined gunshot and ends with a new tin roof. Between the two is a wry and knowing portrait of Rebecca Winter, a photographer whose work made her an unlikely heroine for many women. Her career is now descendent, her bank balance shaky, and she has fled the city for the middle of nowhere. There she discovers, in a tree stand with a roofer named Jim Bates, that what she sees through a camera lens is not all there is to life.
Brilliantly written, powerfully observed, Still Life with Bread Crumbs is a deeply moving and often very funny story of unexpected love, and a stunningly crafted journey into the life of a woman, her heart, her mind, her days, as she discovers that life is a story with many levels, a story that is longer and more exciting than she ever imagined.
Reviews-
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October 14, 2013
Quindlen’s seventh novel, following Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, is a detailed exploration of creativity and the need for connection. Rebecca Winter is a 60-year-old photographer, once revered as a feminist icon, whose work isn’t selling as briskly as it used to. She needs a fresh start after her marriage falls apart because her husband trades her in for a younger model (as he does every 10 years). She rents a cabin in the country while subletting her beloved New York City apartment, needing both the money and the space in which to find her creative spark again. Jim Bates, a local roofer who helps her with the challenges of moving into the cottage, becomes a new friend, as does a dog that seems to prefer living with her rather than with its neglectful owner. Rebecca also finds new objects to photograph in the series of homemade wooden crosses she discovers during hikes in the surrounding woods, without realizing their connection to a tragedy in Jim’s life. Quindlen has always excelled at capturing telling details in a story, and she does so again in this quiet, powerful novel, showing the charged emotions that teem beneath the surface of daily life. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM. -
November 15, 2013
A photographer retreats to a rustic cottage, where she confronts aging and flagging career prospects. Rebecca Winter is known for her Kitchen Counter series, black-and-white photographs capturing domestic minutia, taken as her marriage to a philandering Englishman is foundering on the shoals of mistaken assumptions. But, as her laconic and un-nurturing agent, TG, never fails to remind her, what has she done lately? Her photo royalties are in precipitous decline. Divorced, living in a high-priced Manhattan apartment, Rebecca, 60, finds herself unmoored. Her filmmaker son, Ben, still requires checks from Mom. Her mother, Bebe, is in the Jewish Home for the Aged and Infirm, where she spends her days playing piano pieces on any available surface, except an actual piano. Since the collapse of the family business, Rebecca has supported both her parents and now pays Bebe's nursing home bills. She figures that it will be cheaper to sublet her apartment and rent a ramshackle woodland cabin upstate than to continue to ape the NYC lifestyle of her formerly successful self. She meets the usual eccentrics who people so many fictional small towns, although in Quindlen's hands, these archetypes are convincingly corporeal. Sarah runs the English-themed Tea for Two cafe, not exactly to the taste of most locals. Until Rebecca came to town, Sarah's only regular was Tad, ex-boy soprano, now working clown. Sarah's ne'er-do-well husband, Kevin, sells Rebecca subpar firewood and is admonished by Jim, an upstanding local hero. After helping Rebecca remove a marauding raccoon, Jim helps her find work photographing wild birds. Like Rebecca, Jim is divorced and has onerous family responsibilities, in his case, his bipolar sister who requires constant surveillance. As Rebecca interacts with these townsfolk--and embarks on a new photo series--she begins to understand how provisional her former life--and self--really was. Occasionally profound, always engaging, but marred by a formulaic resolution in which rewards and punishments are meted out according to who ranks highest on the niceness scale.COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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November 1, 2013
Rebecca Winter was once a famous photographer, and, with any luck, she will be again. Having achieved surprising early success with her feminist Kitchen Counter collection, Rebecca, now 60, finds herself on fame and fortune's flip side. With her former torrent of royalties dwindling to a trickle, Rebecca has been forced to give up her perfect Manhattan apartment for a paltry upstate cabin, and with marauding raccoons, stray dogs, and trigger-happy hunters, life in the country is proving to be no walk in Central Park. Luckily, Rebecca still has her camera, and she soon finds inspiration for new work in unexpected places, often in the company of a bird-watching roofer named Jim, whose quiet companionship proves to be just the balm she needs to fully embrace her unfamiliar surroundings. A Pulitzer Prizewinning columnist and star in the pantheon of domestic fiction (Every Last One, 2010), Quindlen presents instantly recognizable characters who may be appealingly warm and nonthreatening, but that only serves to drive home her potent message that it's never too late to embrace life's second chances.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Best-selling Quindlen will hit the road with her latest novel, backed by a mammoth media promotional campaign.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.) -
September 15, 2013
Photographer Rebecca Winter was once famed worldwide for images like Still Life with Bread Crumbs, for which she is best known. But now her success has faded, as has her income, and she's sublet her big-city apartment and moved to a cabin in the woods. A need for home repairs leads her to roofer Jim Bates, and by the novel's closing pages she has love, a new view of the world, and a shiny tin roof. Upbeat romance from the socially astute Quindlen; with an eight-city tour.
Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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November 1, 2013
Formerly a world-famous photographer, Rebecca Winter is past her prime and out of her element. Her photographs are yesterday's news, her family has fallen apart, and her bank balance is inching toward negative numbers. When she can no longer afford her luxurious Manhattan apartment, Rebecca sublets and moves to a small cabin in the middle of nowhere, on a road that has no name. Away from the noise and clatter of the city, she finds peace in a quiet country life, inspiration in the form of mysterious shrines she discovers hidden deep in the woods, and unexpected love with a husky roofer 30 years her junior. VERDICT Pulitzer Prize winner Quindlen has made a home at the top of the best sellers lists with novels that capture the grace and frailty of everyday life (Object Lessons; Blessings), and her latest work is sure to take her there again. With spare, elegant prose, she crafts a poignant glimpse into the inner life of an aging woman who discovers that reality contains much more color than her own celebrated black-and-white images. [See Prepub Alert, 8/26/13.]--Jeanne Bogino, New Lebanon Lib., NY
Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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March 31, 2014
Sixty-year-old Rebecca Winters is having a midlife crisis. Once an iconic photographer, her fame, and sales, have diminished over the years, and money problems have reached a crisis point. She’s long divorced, her son is grown, and she is lonely. To save money, she sublets her Manhattan apartment and rents a ramshackle cottage in the country, where, unexpectedly, she learns about life and herself, rediscovers her love of photography, and connects with Jim Bates, a down-to-earth roofer. Narrator MacDuffie perfectly conveys Rebecca’s worries and self-doubt, her increasing attraction to Jim, and her ultimate sense of confidence and peace. She also creates memorable and believable voices for the other characters—particularly for garrulous Sarah (a village baker) and manly Jim. A Random House hardcover. - The New York Times Book Review "There comes a moment in every novelist's career when she . . . ventures into new territory, breaking free into a marriage of tone and style, of plot and characterization, that's utterly her own. Anna Quindlen's marvelous romantic comedy of manners is just such a book. . . . Taken as a whole, Quindlen's writings represent a generous and moving interrogation of women's experience across the lines of class and race. [Still Life with Bread Crumbs] proves all the more moving because of its light, sophisticated humor. Quindlen's least overtly political novel, it packs perhaps the most serious punch. . . . Quindlen has delivered a novel that will have staying power all its own."
- Minneapolis Star Tribune "[A] wise tale about second chances, starting over, and going after what is most important in life."
- Chicago Tribune "Quindlen's astute observations . . . are the sorts of details every writer and reader lives for."
- People "Enchanting . . . [The protagonist's] photographs are celebrated for turning the 'minutiae of women's lives into unforgettable images,' and Quindlen does the same here with her enveloping, sure-handed storytelling."
- USA Today "Charming . . . a hot cup of tea of a story, smooth and comforting about the vulnerabilities of growing older . . . a pleasure."
- Library Journal "Quindlen has made a home at the top of the bestsellers lists with novels that capture the grace and frailty of everyday life, and her latest work is sure to take her there again. With spare, elegant prose, she crafts a poignant glimpse into the inner life of an aging woman who discovers that reality contains much more color than her own celebrated black-and-white images."
- Publishers Weekly "Quindlen has always excelled at capturing telling details in a story, and she does so again in this quiet, powerful novel, showing the charged emotions that teem beneath the surface of daily life."
- Booklist "A Pulitzer Prize--winning columnist and star in the pantheon of domestic fiction (Every Last One, 2010), Quindlen presents instantly recognizable characters who may be appealingly warm and nonthreatening, but that only serves to drive home her potent message that it's never too late to embrace life's second chances."
- Kirkus Reviews "Profound . . . engaging."
