As an avid reader of works of fiction that feature conservators or conservation, I am often frustrated by books in which very young conservators fresh out of training have been entrusted with the conservation of famous old master paintings or in which conservators are busy solving crimes or are involved with international espionage in their spare time. “Still Life with Monkey”, by Katherine Weber (Paul Dry Books, 2018) is not one of those books. Laura Wheeler, one of the main characters, is a woman in her late thirties who works in the conservation lab at the Yale University Art Gallery and whose husband was recently paralyzed in a terrible car accident. While parts of the book do not ring true vis-à-vis museum practice—I do not think there is a museum so lax in its registration procedures that it would not log in a loan from another museum as soon as it arrived or that a conservator who accidentally dropped and destroyed one of the objects in that loan would pretend that the piece had never arrived—it is refreshing to read about a conservator who deals with the day to day challenges of work and family. #ConservationFiction