In the 39 entries and abundant (over 50) illustrations of Still Life with Remorse, Maira Kalman explores the many varieties of remorse, with humor and poignancy.
Fans of her previous works, such as Principles of Uncertainty and Women Holding Things, will recognize Kalman's charming, insightful, sometimes wistful meanderings about subjects as varied as her parents, Leo Tolstoy, and Clara Schumann. Her paintings include several of Tolstoy; Sarah Bernhardt "in bananas chapeau"; and the French poet Mallarmé, who "outdid all the rest in the looks department," and whose gray eyes seem to stare out from the pages. Her recollections of family, meanwhile, get "still life" treatments, in the loose lines of a Matisse, with telling objects such as the bouquet of flowers Kalman's father kept fresh at her mother's hospital bedside, and the "heavy black coat" that saved the life of a relative who "got involved with unsavory people/ Or he did something unethical./ It is unclear."
Such phrases as "It is unclear" or "Accounts differ" punctuate the entries. She balances weighty moments with witty, often gallows humor. Kalman's pièce de résistance may be "What Could Possibly Go Wrong?": "The Romanovs could have lived longer if they/ had just been a teeny bit nicer to their people.// But they had not an iota of remorse/ about anything.// Lenin and Stalin?/ Same same./ Not an iota of remorse.// This is lack of remorse on an epic scale."
Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, and yet Kalman assures readers that as long as there's music and art and flowers and laughter, there are moments of "merriment/ And good cheer," too. --Jennifer M. Brown, reviewer