An Equal Stillness

An Equal Stillness is a novel posing as a biography of a painter, Jennet Mallow. Born in 1924, Jennet grows up in Yorkshire. In the drab post-war years she forges an early career as a painter, both inspired and constrained by her marriage to another artist, David Feaver. The competing claims of marriage and family on the one hand, and art on the other, provide one of the principal themes of this novel. After a vivid period in southern Spain, Jennet and David return to England. In the 1960s Jennet's career blossoms, and she becomes a sought-after painter, despite personal complications and indeed tragedies. With her children grown up, and David Feaver dead of alcoholism, she retires to her beloved Yorkshire for her final, yet brilliantly productive, years.

Francesca Kay is a wordsmith, and her depictions of landscape and paintings, as well as feelings, are often exhilarating. She has imagined a life in the round.