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

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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.

129 people found this helpful

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Frances C.

Astonished that people love this novel

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 May 2022

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This is a book in which people speak without quotation marks, and happenings can be fantastical beyond belief. The reader must accept this to make any headway at all. Loosely, it is the story of a WW2 soldier, Ulysses, who meets an elderly art historian, Evelyn, and the lives and backgrounds of both. Set mostly in mid-20th century Florence.

I found it showily pretentious throughout and quite a chore to read (Book Club choice!) The characters were ill-explained. I couldn't see why everyone loved Peg (sharp-t0ngued, beautiful, clack-clack heels and that's about it) nor why Evelyn was so venerated (elegant, but for me self-satisfied, and given to speaking excrutiating sentences that everyone found fascinating). Ulysses was a cardboard cutout who never resented anything or anyone in his entire life. Cressy was an old man everyone loved who must have swallowed an encyclopaedia at birth. Alys was a precocious, self-confident kid who grew up to write poems about her lack of self-confidence. There was scarcely one successful and lasting partnership, homo or heterosexual. Hardest for me to forgive was the author's utter disdain for some of her passing characters (Margaret someone, people at the Simi pensione who slurped their soup). Although most characters centred their early lives around an East End pub (whose landlord was hoping for the older ones to die yet seemed to have many loyal customers), their vocabulary and breadth of knowledge was colossal, and yet the poor landlady of the Simi pensione was not, I think, once mentioned without the word 'Cockney' prefacing.

Perhaps what saved it for me, among the needless and tedious details of food and art, was the description of Florence in its great flood, about which I knew nothing. Some scenes were atmospheric. But all in all I was grateful to reach the last page.

One person found this helpful

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moman

A love letter to the city of Florence

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 July 2022

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I had mixed feelings about this book. I enjoyed parts of it and other parts I found a bit tedious. It's starts in the war in Italy with Evelyn, a young gay woman with an interest in saving paintings. However, most of the book seems to be about Ulysses, the soldier she meets whilst in Italy who returns to London after the war and appears to live in a pub with a selection of unusual characters. He has the good fortune to inherit a place in Florence which he opens as a pensione. Some of the people from his time in London end up living with him in Florence in what appears to be a very charmed life. If anything I would say it's a love letter to the city of Florence, painting a fairly idyllic picture. It was a bit too cosy and even the drama of the flood didn't create too much upset to the idyllic existence.

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JanJan

Utopian fantasy

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 July 2022

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All the way through ( in my humble opinion) I felt this book was created to a formula to sell the book and to possibly gain plaudits from other authors and literary prize awarding panels because it aims ( I feel) to meet a set criteria.

It’s unrelated ( in my experience) to reality . It’s an utopian fantasy where practically every character moves to Florence and lives in the same property together ‘ happily ever after’ . It also assumes the world is divided equally between heterosexual and LGBT.
It even uses the ploy of using E M Forster’s work to enhance it particularly in the final chapter.

On the plus side the references to historical events during the decades it covers had obviously been well researched
The descriptions of Florence are vivid.
My favourite character was Claude -a parrot who quotes Shakespeare in context

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Artist with Attitude

No quote marks

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 June 2022

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I struggled through the first couple of chapters, but found that without speech ( quote ) marks, it was annoying to read as you keep going back to check if someone 'thought' something or was it spoken. such an awful shame as I had been really looking forward to reading 'Still Life'.

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Amazon Customer

Disappointing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 June 2022

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Admittedly only half way through, but find the characters underwritten , shallow and/ or pretentious.
I will complete the book, but so far disappointed. Hope it improves.

One person found this helpful

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Struggling

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 September 2021

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Not for me

2 people found this helpful

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Mrs Jill Carter

POST-WAR LGBT GROUP IN FLORENCE

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 December 2021

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Lots of lGBT characters. Not quite what I expected. Set amidst the art and architecture of Florence. It was a passable read.

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Mrs. A. G. Parkin

Brilliant book, thoroughly recommend

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 August 2022

Verified Purchase

Liked:
Plot , characters and setting . A little hard to get into but well worth persevering
What did I use it for ? Well.its a book so I read it !!!

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Florence based feel-good fiction

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 June 2021

The great thing about 'feel-good' fiction is that it... well, makes you feel good. And who doesn't want that? But in the same way that even a dedicated chocoholic might feel a bit sick after eating a giant bar, you can have too much of a good thing.

Sarah Winman is what I would consider an author in the 'feel good' genre - one of the better ones, I should add. Her books have loveable characters and they leave you with the fuzzy sense that human beings are generally good and decent and well meaning. She writes about an idealised world, where people are just that bit better than they are in reality. It's a nice place to visit. But after a while, it begins to jar.

'Still Life', her fourth novel, is probably closest to her first (and probably most well loved) 'When God Was A Rabbit'. The book spans around thirty years, and is set mainly in Florence. It begins in 1944, where Allied forces are in the process of driving occupying German troops out of Italy. A young British soldier with the unlikely name of Ulysses encounters an older British woman, there to identify looted art (which may or may not be a cover story for a spy). During their short meeting, she awakens in him an interest in art and a love for the city of Florence, where he later moves to open a guesthouse together with an eclectic group of characters from his native east end of London.

Winman writes well about Florence and about art and its impact on people. She creates characters who are really likeable or loveable (mostly) and whom the reader will come to care about. Her eccentric, loving set-ups may be ultimately unconvincing, but you'll inevitably wish you could go and join in. Her writing can be funny in places, and very touching in others.

There are a number of factors however that frustrated me and lowered what might have been a five star rating. Firstly, the length. It's a long book, and it can feel like a slog. She could have cut down the dialogue length and trimmed out some of the small subplots to avoid overload. Secondly, the reliance on coincidence - something that irritates me massively in novels. One coincidence is allowable, but several? Thirdly, the fantastical prophetic abilities of one character (why couldn't she have used a mundane way for him to come into money), and on a related note, the parrot's talent for saying exactly the right thing - like an equal participant in a conversation. I also disliked the character of Peg - probably because she was universally loved by the other characters despite displaying nothing on the page that would make the reader feel the same. Having a character adored for her singing voice and physical beauty is not a great idea in a book, given the readers will never appreciate either of those things. I didn't understand her behaviour or choices and the reaction of the other characters to her undermined their judgement to me. These smallish annoyances can get blown up over a long novel. I want to buy into Winman's cosy world, but I just can't quite do it.

I also found the treatment of homophobia - or rather the lack of it - unrealistic. We would all like the world to be tolerant and treat same-sex relationships equally. But it doesn't take an expert to know the mid 20th century was not like that. Even in modern Britain you might expect someone to react with a little surprise or to be slightly wrongfooted as they make the mental adjustment in their knowledge of a friend or relative who has 'come out'. For a number of working class 1950s men to all be utterly unbothered and unmoved by such information does a disservice to what must have been the real experience of gay people in that time. This is just one example of how Winman's world feels like a little bubble - nice but not real.

Overall, 'Still Life' is a well written and ultimately life-affirming book. If you enjoy 'feel-good' fiction, you're likely to love it. It would be a good choice to read for someone visiting Florence, as the sense of place is very strong. It made me want to visit again one day. If you can't abide books that aren't completely realistic, I would not recommend it.

20 people found this helpful

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Jessica Daley

Amazing book but pages fell out halfway through!!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 July 2022

Verified Purchase

Absolutely love the book but the quality of this edition was shockingly bad. Binding agent was very weak and pages start to fall out halfway through the read.

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