Robin Anderson Author Reviews

Still Life - The Resurrection

"What Characters!"
Amos Lassen

We have yet another Robin Anderson title here but this one is quite different than some of his other books
as it has the wildest cast of characters that I have seen in a very long time. Some of you may remember
my earlier review of this book. It has now been revised. Moving between England, Italy and Morocco there
is a lot of black humor in "Still Life" which deal with the "commonplace" themes of love, money and greed
in a very uncommon way. You have to get on the roller coaster and travel at breakneck speed to follow all
the goings on.

Ethelred Jones is a film director of fame who was responsible for wild films who bathes in his own glory
(much of which is self-imposed). Clytemnestra is his beautiful wife, Charles Conrad is a doctor, Monday,
a black man is his man Friday, and Trisomy is a woman who thinks she is a child and has had better days.
They all come together here as do fireworks. But there are other dysfunctional characters.

Oswald Argent is a self-loving actor wannabe and he takes a part in a movie named "Still Life". He goes to the home of Ethelred and Clytemnestra, a mansion on an isolated island and he learns quickly about his film role. Then we have Bryan Scima, Oswald's ex who comes along and meets Sir Miles, a man who develops property and who has done quite well and sets up house with him. As can be expected a series of very strange happenings ensue that mix violence, glamour and craziness. In fact, so much goes on that you need to take periodic breaks while reading or you will most definitely burn out. I was wiped out when I finished the book but it was a good feeling. The original problem I mentioned in my earlier review of the first edition (the small print) has been corrected making the book now totally enjoyable.

Anderson is one of the authors that surprise us every time he has a new book out. About the only thing I can be sure of it that he will be irreverent and that is what I love most about him. His characters and their situations are so outré that he can only carry them off because he is such a good writer and has done such serious planning. His humor is dark but never morose and his drag queens are endearing. His version is "Still Life" carries the subtitle of "The Resurrection" because that is exactly what Robin Anderson has done. He has taken his original novel written some three years ago and revised it thus allowing us to enjoy it once again.

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★ ★ ★ ★

"The One and The Only Robin Anderson"
Grady Harp - Amazon

One thing you can always depend on in the novels of Robin Anderson is to be shocked, at times embarrassed, and all the while entertained with some of the most audacious ideas and situations and characters ever created. Anderson is naughty to the extreme and gets away with it because he writes so well.

As with most of his novels, this one, originally published in 2010 and now revised, cannot be summarized in a brief description of the plot. There really is no reason to know the plot outline with his books: you just jump into the middle of one and start piecing it together - because it is very well constructed and eventually these loony characters interact in ways both predictable and insane.

STILL LIFE is a take off on art, film, black humor, and literary references that keep it at high pitch throughout. To quote the back of the book's introductory summary, `Set in London, Ital and Morocco, STILL LIFE is an articulate, cynical novel filled with black humour at its most humorous; a volcanic-volatile hot bed of physicality, greed, money and destruction...Think Edgar Allan Poe meets Freud, The Marquis de Sade and Noel Coward.

Add to this absurdly hilarious and naughty plot the multiple plays on words, and parodies and flaunted innuendoes and you have - Robin Anderson.

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