P is a ghost imprisoned inside a museum. She spends her time gliding from gallery to gallery, floor to floor, her only friends the museum's collection of art and archaeology. She is lonely, desperate for contact with any living being. She feels closest to the museum's uniformed guards, inside whom she often seeks comfort. Through her exploration of her 'guardians', we gain a snapshot of their lives, each one caught at a critical moment, vacillating between movement and inertia, between initiative and indecision. In a final climax of devotion and betrayal, we learn P's own secret: who she is and how she came to be a captive in this institution. A feast, an expedition, a tribute to a lost soul, to a museum and to its staff, 'A Still Life' is Martin Pevsner's seventh novel.