Introduction

“Stark and compelling . . . Rigorously unsentimental yet suffused with emotion: possibly the best work yet from an always stimulating writer.”?Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Katharine Weber’s Still Life With Monkey is a beautifully wrought paean of praise for the ordinary pleasures taken for granted by the able-bodied. In precise and often luminous prose, with intelligence and tenderness, Weber’s latest novel examines the question of what makes a life worth living."?Washington Post

“A brilliantly crafted novel, brimming with heart.”?Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage

“Rich and compelling . . . Her characters are vividly, achingly real, including the tiny, furry one at the novel’s center.”?Ann Packer, author of The Dive From Clausen’s Pier

Duncan Wheeler is a successful architect who savors the quotidian pleasures in life until a car accident leaves him severely paralyzed and haunted by the death of his young assistant. Now, Duncan isn’t sure what there is left to live for, when every day has become “a broken series of unsuccessful gestures.”

Duncan and his wife, Laura, find themselves in conflict as Duncan’s will to live falters. Laura grows desperate to help him. An art conservator who has her own relationship to the repair of broken things, Laura brings home a highly trained helper monkey?a tufted capuchin named Ottoline?to assist Duncan with basic tasks. Duncan and Laura fall for this sweet, comical, Nutella-gobbling little creature, and Duncan’s life appears to become more tolerable, fuller, and funnier. Yet the question persists: Is it enough?

Katharine Weber is a masterful observer of humanity, and Still Life with Monkey, full of tenderness and melancholy, explores the conflict between the will to live and the desire to die.

Editorial Review

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Excerpt

Her long fingers caressed his cheek for a moment, as she traced her way down to his jaw, her cool touch just grazing the stubble of Duncan’s five-day beard. She studied his face, seeking his gaze. He met her eyes for an instant before looking away, strangely embarrassed by his inability to match the intensity of her insistent stare. Ottoline smacked little air kisses as she reached up to touch his face again, and he was surprised by the gentle precision of her tiny fingernails sorting through his whiskers as she investigated up the contour of his cheek from jaw to upper lip. She pressed two fingers to his lips, and he nearly kissed them, but he didn’t, and then she contemplated her fingertips, sticking out her tongue daintily for the tiny flake of something she had found on his lip. She nibbled at it contentedly while continuing to stare up at him, making a sweet, soft, peeping sound. She repositioned her springy little body constantly, and now she shifted again, peering up at his chin, plucking with fascination at the bristles that speckled his face. They had been alone together for five minutes.

Ignore her, Martha, the trainer from the Institute, had advised, before leaving them alone. Act as if you’ve seen a million monkeys and you’re bored by her. Let her be curious about you. Stay very still. Make no sudden movements. Duncan was very good at sitting still, and he was pretty much the master of being bored, too.

Re-settling herself on his chest, Ottoline began to unfasten the buttons of his cotton shirt, the tufty top of her head brushing under his chin while she dedicated herself to the apparently familiar task of unbuttoning. Top button, done. Next button, done. She breathed out a little sigh of concentration as she undid one more button, but now she was stymied by the padded chest strap of the harness that kept Duncan from flopping forward. She stroked the placket edge of his open shirt and then she touched his exposed chest. She slid her hand into the gap of his unbuttoned shirt and rummaged under the fabric very slowly, moving her hand tentatively, feeling for something, stroking his chest hair, now threading her fingers through it, and Duncan squeezed his closed eyes even more tightly shut as he felt himself moved inexplicably. Her careful, exquisite touch was disturbingly unlike the respectful and routine handling by the various people whose task it was to bathe him and dress him and manage his body. She rotated her fingertip in a tiny circle, gently centering on his left nipple, before moving on to twine her fingers in the surrounding hairs, searching the surface of his body, right there at the equator of his sensory level, delineating the edge of feeling and not feeling. How did she know to trace this line?

She continued her tender exploration, mapping his skin with those careful little fingers. He was barely breathing, but he could feel his heart jumping under her hand. He stayed very still, with his eyes half-closed, feeling her cool, questioning hands on his skin. She had a distinctive, salty tang that was quite pleasant, and as he breathed it in, there was something nearly familiar, yet new. Ah, Milly. Her fur always had a sweet, sunshiny smell when she had been outdoors. This was muskier.

Milly and Molly were the grey tiger sister cats of Duncan’s childhood, seventh birthday surprises for Duncan and Gordon, his twin. Molly, Gordon’s cat, was a hard luck puss. She had somehow lost most of her tail in her earliest days. Gordon told everyone she was a Manx (which he pronounced “mankth”), but she was really just a cat without a tail. Milly had an elegant, expressive tail, tipped in white. Molly, always timid and fearful, had a short life; she was hit by a car during the twins’ tenth birthday party. But Milly lived nearly twenty years, and died, by then a tiny husk of tigery dignity who spent most of her days sleeping in the middle of the big old dictionary which lay open on a stand next to Duncan’s desk, only a few months before Duncan met Laura during intermission in the lobby of Long Wharf Theater, introduced by a client of Duncan’s who had chatted with Laura at a previous play, because their season ticket seats were in the same row. The client, a banker who was forever renovating his vast Italian Renaissance style villa on the waterfront in Sachem’s Head, had offered Duncan his wife’s ticket at the last minute when their sitter cancelled. (Neither Laura nor Duncan could remember the name of the play that night, a tedious modern interpretation of a Greek drama that got terrible reviews.)

When she was young, on hot summer nights, done with her roaming, Milly often came to the twins’ bedroom window, leaping onto the shingled front porch roof under their pair of windows from the adjacent maple tree. When she mewed and scraped at the screen, Duncan would tiptoe across the room, while Gordon slept, and, despite their mother’s admonitions, he would unhook the bottom of the wooden screen frame to push it out so she could slip inside with a grateful chirp. When Milly sprawled purring at the foot of his bed, Duncan liked to flop over beside her, his face pressed into the fur on the back of her neck, so he could breathe in her sweet grassy aroma. He had loved her very much.

Their mother often found him in the morning that way, sleeping on top of his sheets at the foot of his bed with his feet on his pillow, but she never understood why. Identical or not, her boys were quite different from each other. Gordon slept like a stone, and she hardly had to make his bed from one day to the next. Not Duncan, as their mother often complained as she tucked his wildly disheveled bedding together into smooth order. (For thirty-five years, until the day she died, Helen Wheeler was never able to keep herself from making comparisons, and any complaint or praise of one of her sons was inevitably at the expense of the other. Everyone and everything had to be more than or less than someone or something else in Helen’s world.) Even when Duncan stayed all night under the covers where he belonged, he twisted his bedclothes into a chaotic vortex. Duncan slept like a windmill, she liked to say. Gordon slept like a stone, but Duncan slept like a windmill.

Not these days.

His eyes still nearly closed, Duncan could see Ottoline’s inquisitive gaze through the fringe of his own eyelashes. She was done investigating his chest hairs and now she sat back and reached up to touch his cheek again, peeping softly as she cupped his chin with both hands, turning and angling his face with an insistent pressure until he opened his eyes all the way. She was only inches from his nose, staring at him intently with those pellucid brown eyes. What? She smacked her lips expectantly and tilted her head. He imitated her peeping sound and tilted his head as best he could, and then he smacked his own lips back at her in an exaggerated kiss-kiss, the way he would play with a baby. Ottoline cheeped delightedly, a shrill, joyful sound that nearly hurt his ears, and then suddenly, as if she had just realized who he was—Oh, it’s you!—she launched herself against him and hugged him fiercely, burrowing close, her warm body pressed tight against his clavicles, her little fingernails digging into the back of his neck with a pulsing grip. It was oddly thrilling, and flattering, if a little incommodious. He closed his eyes again, feeling strangely peaceful and relaxed. Everything was perfectly still. He hadn’t thought about death for at least ten minutes. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1.Why does Duncan agree to have Ottoline the helper monkey come into his life?

2.Do you think it is morally acceptable to train capuchin monkeys as helper monkeys? Is it any different from seeing-eye dogs?

3.Why does Duncan keep secret the details he recalls of the events leading up to the car accident? Why does he feel so responsible for Todd’s death? Did Todd have awareness of Duncan’s feelings?

4. What might have happened if Laura was pregnant and able to carry the baby to term? Would Duncan have made a different choice?

5. Do you think Duncan and Laura had a good marriage before the accident?

6. Duncan and Gordon were both profoundly affected by the house they grew up in. How do you think this affects their stories? Is this equally true for most people?

7. Would Duncan and Gordon’s sibling relationship be different if they were not twins?

8. Why did Laura conceal the breakage of the pre-Columbian figurine? Did she do the right thing when she agreed to create a false report about the pair of bowls for the Cavendishes as part of a deal to get Duncan’s Four-Square house built?

9. What do you think actually happened that day in Laura’s childhood at the Ohio State Fair?

10. What do you think will happen to Gordon in the next few years? What do you think Laura’s life will be like from now on? Will Gordon and Laura be at peace with Duncan’s choice?

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