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    Still Life Las Vegas: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Still Life Las Vegas: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Still Life Las Vegas: A Novel
    Audiobook9 hours

    Still Life Las Vegas: A Novel

    Published by Macmillan Audio

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    When Walter Stahl was five-years-old, his mother drove away in the family's blue Volvo and never came back. Now seventeen, living in the dregs of Las Vegas, taking care of his ailing father and marking time in a dead-end job along the Strip, Walter's life so far has been defined by her absence. He doesn't remember what she looks like; he's never so much as seen a photograph but, still, he looks for her among the groups of tourists he runs into every day, allowing himself the dim hope that she might still be out there, somewhere.

    But when Walter meets Chrysto and Acacia, a brother and sister working as living statues at the Venetian Hotel, his world cracks wide open. With them he discovers a Las Vegas he never knew existed and, as feelings for Chrysto develop, a side of himself he never knew he had. At the same time, clues behind his mother's disappearance finally start to reveal themselves, and Walter is confronted with not only the truth about himself, but also that of his family history.


    Threading through this coming-of-age story are beautiful, heart-wrenching graphic illustration, which reveal the journey of Walter's mother Emily: how she left everything to chase a vision of Liberace across the country; and how Walter's father Owen went searching for her amongst the gondolas of the Venetian Hotel.

    In James Sie's debut novel, Still Life Las Vegas, the magical collides with the mundane; memory, sexual awakening and familial ties all lead to a place where everything is illuminated, and nothing is real.

    "One of the most startlingly assured debut novels I've ever read. James Sie's writing is gorgeous, and the story is heartbreaking. I am in awe."-Augusten Borroughs, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Running with Scissors and This Is How
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Audio
    Release dateAug 11, 2015
    ISBN9781427271563
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for Still Life Las Vegas

    3/5

    9 ratings3 reviews

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    • 3/5
      This quirky, strange, sometimes-confusing debut novel doesn't seem to know what it wants to be when it grows up. I agree with others that the writing is good and the reading experience was definitely interesting, but I ultimately found the book to be quite dark and sad with little resolution for the characters or the reader. James Sie stuffed way too many concepts, themes, and plots into this one novel between the family curse, issues of race, adoption, competitive accordion playing, Liberace, mythology, coming of age as a homosexual, mental health issues, immigration, Las Vegas, and Greek culture. Because of this breadth, the depth was missing and I was disappointed that characters who seemed quite intriguing were left relatively undeveloped. I suspect that this novel could have been excellent with a bit more focus. The pages here and there in graphic novel format further added to the chaos. Maybe if the entire book had been written as a graphic novel with the wonderful illustrations of Sungyoon Choi, the unbelievability and expansive nature of the story would have seemed at home.
    • 3/5
      Overreaching...but bless its heart for some of the accuracies of Las Vegas itself.
    • 3/5
      The writing quality itself in this book is alright, the structure of the telling of the story is where things rapidly go downhill. The main character Walter is a completely lost 18 year old with separated messed up parents, and they live in Las Vegas. The problem this book had for me was two-fold 1. It is often risky telling a story from a different characters view point using alternating chapters. 2. It is also risky telling stories in both the past (especially multiple times in the past), as well as in the present. This book combines both of these styles and the book is a mess. This is not recommended for a first time author.Because of the various viewpoints and the back and forth in time, it is hard to track anything that is actually happening. Sadly the story was overly complicated by its style.