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Book Summary and Reviews of Still Life with Bread Crumbs by Anna Quindlen

Still Life with Bread Crumbs by Anna Quindlen

Still Life with Bread Crumbs

by Anna Quindlen

  • Critics' Consensus (0):
  • Readers' Rating (7):
  • Published:
  • Jan 2014, 272 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

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.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"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." - Publishers Weekly

"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." - Kirkus

"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." - Library Journal

This information about Still Life with Bread Crumbs 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.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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Dorothy T.

A good relaxing read
Anna Quindlen has written this novel with wit and humor--I particularly enjoyed the chapter titles--and has created a character I really like, especially given that she is my age and still active and attractive to a younger man. Rebecca still has some of those pesky confidence issues, but I guess age doesn't clear up everything, which is good because it keeps her and the rest of us striving and learning and changing. This book may not qualify as one of the great American novels, but it is worth the time and would lend itself to lively discussions with the book clubs.

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Author Information

Anna Quindlen Author Biography

Anna Quindlen is a novelist and journalist whose work has appeared on fiction, nonfiction, and self-help bestseller lists. She is the author of many novels: Object Lessons, One True Thing, Black and Blue, Blessings, Rise and Shine, Every Last One, Still Life with Bread Crumbs, and Miller's Valley. Her memoir Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, published in 2012, was a #1 New York Times bestseller. Her book A Short Guide to a Happy Life has sold more than a million copies. While a columnist at The New York Times she won the Pulitzer Prize and published two collections, Living Out Loud and Thinking Out Loud. Her Newsweek columns were collected in Loud and Clear.

Author Interview
Link to Anna Quindlen's Website

Name Pronunciation
Anna Quindlen: kwind-len

Other books by Anna Quindlen at BookBrowse
  • Rise and Shine jacket

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