Amazon.co.uk:Customer reviews: Still Life: The instant Sunday Times bestseller and BBC Between the Covers Book Club pick

Top positive review

Sublime

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 August 2021

I'm still reading this beautiful book, eking it out as I don't want the story to end. Like all of Sarah's books this is a story that I know will live on in me. I can't write a clever critical review as it feels too close to my own story, I would just say, read it.

UPDATE: 08.09.21 Well I finished the book and it stands alongside Sarah's other three books. I adored the writing, happily embraced the magic of both talking trees and parrot and just kept wishing that this was how the world was then and how the world should be now. I've read some rather spiteful one star reviews with thinly veiled queer-bashing and they underline even more why Sarah's writing and Sarah's world view is so important.
Some people seem to think that fiction should be indiscernible from non-fiction though I can't think why they would! I love that Sarah's novels operate in a magical/realist landscape and that chance meeting and coincidence can turn the story round: I find it interesting that we accept coincidences in life but not fiction and I find it fascinating that chance plays such a huge role in our lives but some people insist that there is no place for it in the novel - go back to reading non-fiction I say and leave us dreamers alone.

56 people found this helpful

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gerardpeter

Spaghetti alla Melodrama

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 August 2021

Sarah Winman assembles a diverse cast of characters to deliver a “feel good” saga set in Italy and London. Happy endings I am fine with, but this was too much.

The young army corporal and the ageing art historian we first meet in 1944, in Florence, brought together by chance. This “odd couple” was promising, and the early pages are the best part of the book. Through these two ripple wider circles of family and friends. All salt-of-the-earth types and neither rounded nor credible characters. They felt rather like a “gang” – fans of Friends would probably love it. Chance and rather unlikely good fortune propels the story.

The interesting question is will Ulysses and Evelyn meet up again – hints of Friends again. This propels the reader through until 1980.The setting is divided between an East End pub and an Italian pensione. Like other similar novels the author checklists the big events with broad accuracy. However, the characters seemed remarkably tolerant, open-minded and liberal. Just too good to be true. Too nice really. This makes it difficult to plot social changes as I assume the author would like to do and as the reader would expect.

Dialogue is also anachronistic. Modern expressions are freely given to speakers in the 1940s and 1950s when they were absolutely not current. I am not sure how bothered the author was to get this right, as she also gives us a talking tree and a free-thinking parrot.

In my humble opinion, a novel must convince and challenge – and this does neither.

130 people found this helpful

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gerardpeter

Spaghetti alla Melodrama

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 August 2021

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130 people found this helpful

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Julie Warren

Poor!!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 July 2021

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Pretentious rubbish!!
Who is giving these books 5 stars. Have they ever read a really good book??

40 people found this helpful

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Robert F. Steadman

Meandered along, I lost interest halfway through.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 August 2021

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I simply couldn't get into this book. It sort of meandered along, pleasant enough, especially if you like Florence but I was aching for something compelling to happen . By halfway, it hadn't so I gave up. And I thought the parrot was a nutty idea.

8 people found this helpful

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Y. Beavis

Sadly disappointing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 December 2021

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I really wish I could say I liked this book, as it came with such fulsome reviews, but I found myself drowning in saccharine, exhausted by the endless succession of sentimental tableaux that make up most of the narrative. It had its moments - an expiring parrot quoting relevant bits of Shakespeare, and many poor echoes of ‘The English Patient’, but really, at times I wished something really bad would happen just to stop the relentless feel-good. It did have a lovely cover though.

5 people found this helpful

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GreenBlue

Very Hard Going!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 February 2022

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I just thought this was a pretty boring book! In fact I absolutely struggled to get the end of it. I did read it all because it had been recommended to me and I kept thinking it might get better, but for me it was really boring!

4 people found this helpful

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Jane Eyre

Mixed feelings

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 June 2022

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I loved part of this book - the story of Ulysses and his unusual ‘family’. A sweet and gentle story through the ages. The characters that came and went were interesting and funny - it was easier to keep track of them all in audible as the failure to properly mark speech made for confusion.
I didn’t love the story of Evelyn so much - felt it was by and large a bit pointless . Loved the descriptions of Florence it really came alive (echoes of Room with a View - deliberately?) . An ok read - the use of slang throughout jarred …surely more eloquent ways of describing coupling than using a four letter word?

One person found this helpful

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Jo Haythornthwaite

charming book which takes us back to Florence

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 May 2022

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This is a charming book. I would recommend it to anyone who loves Italy, Italians, Italian food, architecture, art and scenery.
I would not recommend it to anyone who had difficulty with long books! It is rather too long but the characters are so charming that I did not mind.
At times I felt
it was a little too sweetly sentimental and too full of coincidences, unlikely meetings and lives coinciding in unlikely ways but I guess one has to accept it as a fairy story of a sort.
The writer’s strengths are her brilliant powers of description and her understanding of the endless varieties of love and grief. The chapter describing the Florence floods is overwhelming.

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J. Herbert

Boring

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 April 2022

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I’m over half way and can find nothing to recommend this book. I feel I’m wasting my life. I don’t often give up but this time I am.

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CMM

Speech marks

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 August 2022

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Good story but the lack of speech marks distracted me.
No idea why they were left out.

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sanchia Mitchell

Completely absorbing!!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 August 2021

Verified Purchase

Felt like I was in Tuscany .. fell right into the story and the characters.. totally loved the book

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