FICTION: An Equal StillnessBy Francesca Kay Weidenfeld Nicholson 229pp. £12.99
JENNET MALLOW is the most important British artist of the 20th century. Jennet Mallow is also somebody’s wife, somebody’s mother, somebody’s lover, somebody’s muse, somebody’s model, somebody’s collector’s item. ‘An Equal Stillness’, Francesca Kay’s mock biography of this fictional woman, is a life re-imagined after death leaves only art as testimony.
Born in 1924, Mallow grows up through the second World War and its aftermath of economic depression and the stirrings of social change. These play their part in her own formation as her life progresses through the 20th century. Her traditional upbringing and the social mores of her time steer her into early marriage and motherhood, and it is only through her painting that she finds independence and personal fulfilment and a voice denied her in both life and death. This creative impulse, exhibited from an early age, is stunted by the practicalities of poverty and family life and overshadowed by her artist husband’s sense of entitlement and ego.
Mallow’s artistic development follows that of the women’s movement in the 20th century: she is defined by the male gaze, in search of a room of her own as she struggles with the leaching of her energy and time by those with whom, through choice or circumstance of birth, she shares a life. Ultimately she overcomes these obstacles to create celebrated and lasting work. Mallow makes sense of her often passive experience through the active medium of her art, an art painstakingly described in the book from its genesis through the practical requirements for its execution.
‘An Equal Stillness’ is, however, the story of Mallow’s life, and Kay avoids any narrative neatness, allowing the trailing threads of human existence their place in this biography and refusing to tie them into a cosy closure. She takes pains to provide the missing perspective of this artist’s gaze in her exploration of how art is “the yield of lived experience”, as Mallow’s fictional biographer tells us.
This biographer brings his own set of problems to the story. The decision to make Mallow’s own son the “author” muddies the line between subject and object. His voice at times intrudes on its own stated impartiality, while at others purports to speak as his mother’s. It’s a deliberately complicating device and though it underscores the notion of Mallow’s own voice being silenced by her family, by her circumstances, by her self-centred husband and ultimately by death, it only serves to distance its subject.
‘An Equal Stillness’ is Kay’s first novel, and her chosen themes are both commendable and ambitious, though the voice with which to tackle them ultimately eludes her. As a result, her examination of women and their dichotomous relationship with art becomes academic, while the pulse of her protagonist remains absent.
Fiona McCann is a freelance journalist. Her Irish Timesblog won best arts and culture blog at the Irish blog awards last weekend.