Howard G. Williams

The title of James Sie’s novel Still Life Las Vegas evokes a perplexing contradiction. The city of Las Vegas, with its raucous slot machines and flashy performers, seems like a poor place to suggest a still life painting. The most interesting part of James Sie’s novel, however, describes the nascent relationship between Walter, an artistically talented high school student, and Chrystos, a “living statue” who creates scenes from Greek mythology for tourists in The Venetian casino. Sie assembles a kind of narrative still life as he twists through an often showy, sometimes sexy, and yet very careful arrangement of incidents. […]