Voice actor James Sie's debut novel starts out strong, with a woman pushed to her limit, driving anywhere and lightening the car as she goes — including tossing out a car seat. This woman is Emily Stahl, musician, mother, carer to her depressed husband. The child who normally would occupy that car seat is Walter Stahl.
Still Life Las Vegas alternates between their points of view (Walter in the past, Emily in the present) and Walter's father's point of view (also in the past) and comics (drawn by Walter) telling the story of Emily as told to him by his father. Walter lives in Las Vegas, where his father moved him while trying to find Emily. Now seventeen, Walter is driven to chase down the secrets of his mother's history. A chance meeting with a living statue in the Venetian hotel, Chrysto, also puts him on the path to discovering his sexuality.
I loved both narrators. They're both searching for direction, albeit in very different ways. The interstitial comics are great too, Sungyoon Choi's art a beautiful accompaniment to James Sie's words. It's also provides a clear division between what Walter has been told versus Emily's actual words.
However, I felt that Still Life Las Vegas didn't quite live up to the strength of its opening. I felt Emily had reason to run from the very beginning, but the story keeps adding new layers of sadness to her past and reveals a horror that I think was gratuitous, not adding to the plot or being explored with the weight it deserved. As the story goes on, Walter also has to deal with the unfortunate truth as well as a betrayal.
Still Life Las Vegas is an engrossing bildungsroman, but ultimately too depressing for me. Still, I'm a little sad that James Sie has yet to write a second novel. I think he has a knack for description and character and I'd like to see what he'd write with more polish.
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