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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A. Bear

Sublime

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 August 2021

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56 people found this helpful

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Nicholls Anne

Simply wonderful!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 July 2021

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I dithered about buying this book for a while, and I am so glad I did. At first the lack of speech marks put me off reading the book, as I am a grammar nut, but I soon got used to the conversations that flowed without the need for inverted commas. It was a little hard to get into at first, the London part a bit bizarre, to be honest, but once the story line took me to Florence, the book came alive for me. It is a wonderful evocation of different types of people, all linked in bizarre ways by the end, with Florence, a city I know well, accurately described. The horrendous flooding that occurred is so well depicted and having been there after the waters receded at the time, I know how devastating an event it was for the inhabitants of the city. The story is at times uplifting, bizarre, humorous, one that will live long in the memory when the final page is turned.

34 people found this helpful

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Malcolm Breeze

A book to please everyone

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 June 2021

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I came across this book whilst reading the Daily Mail book review section. It certainly received a good review so, I thought I'd give it a try, I'm so pleased that I did. From start to finish I was captivated. I chuckled, I laughed out loud and I had moist eyes on more than one occasion.
The characters are wonderfully loveable, the storyline tugs the heart strings, and the art, history and Italian geography knowledge is a joy to behold.

I can honestly say this is one of the most enjoyable books I've read in years. So much so I've since purchased more from Sarah Winman and I am currently enjoying When God was a rabbit. I highly recommend Still life, well worth a read.

29 people found this helpful

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Graham James

Wonderful, beautiful, heart warming, magnificent writing. Read it please!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 July 2022

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Every so often a novel comes along which impresses one so much with its wonder and beauty that one is moved and, in my case at least, one finds it difficult to discover suitable words of praise as to do it justice. This is a truly wonderful book. The writing is magnificent and beyond compare of anything I have read in many a year let alone month. The story is wonderfully tender and heart warming and free of the conflicts and tension that seem to be de rigueur these days, even in so called “feel-good” stories. Trust me when I say this is a feel-good story beyond compare and it was an absolute joy to read.

I am not going to try to analyse the book; this leads to spoilers, and I feel it would be crass. I do not look for meaning. I take from it what I do and, from this, I took a great deal and shall remember it for a long time.

My only negative comment is that I was slightly disappointed with the last phase of the book covering Evelyn’s early trip to Florence and the last act, as it were, back in the present. Somehow the writing did not flow the same in this part and, though it was lovely and poignant, the very final segment felt too short and unfinished.

It also helps, I feel, if you knew a little Italian and something about art. I know neither and so the “in-jokes” were lost on me. I am sure you’d get even more, possibly a lot more, from the book if you knew about these things. Even then it should not put off those like me who are ignorant.

The lack of quotation marks for the speech is a modern technique I do not like, but I did not find it affected the flow or my understanding of who said what to whom. I admit that the parrot was somewhat fantastical, but the beautiful writing and the story and characters were too good and too wonderful to make that matter.

This is the type of book I love and, unless you are cold, unsentimental and lacking any emotion whatever, you too will love it too.

8 people found this helpful

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sarah bourne

Beautiful, heart-warming book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 June 2021

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I have just finished this remarkable book. It is a sweeping saga of memorable characters and beautiful settings. I didn't want it to end but I am so glad to have read it and had the opportunity to join the diverse characters on their journeys. Can't recommend it highly enough. Thank you Sarah Winman!

10 people found this helpful

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veracity

Seems this book divides opinions , love it or loathe it

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 July 2022

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I loved it .
Ignore the mealy mouthed moaners, the author has them pegged (page 375) 'Small minded snobs. An endemic English quality , believing only the educated middle class know the secrets of Art' .Couldn't have put it better myself .
I sometimes check out the other reviews the negative people leave, seems that many of them only leave reviews when they have something negative to say .
I try to be an equal opportunities reviewer !
That's by the by .
About the book .
It's fab .
If you like Maeve Binchy and Marianne Keyes, you'll like this.
Yes, it has it's faults, but it's just a warm , evocative story , with empathetic characters.
Utterly unfeasible of course, how all the characters are gathered in to Ulysses' inherited Italian idyll.
But it's FICTION, isn't it ?

One person found this helpful

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Bionic Sarah

The revolving doors of history

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 November 2021

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What a truly beautiful masterpiece this book is .I had to keep stopping to savour the shear poetic magic
Of the language
The story a sort of revolving doors of history where friends pass each other through the years so closely they can feel each other but equally unaware of the others prescience has a circular symmetry that is really very lovely
It’s a book about enjoying life for what it is not for what you want it to be ,a book about clasping loved ones to your side and enjoying time spent in your company .It left me feeling bereft and optimistic in equal portions .
I adored the authors writing style which is so perceptive and showed such awareness of the importance of the minutiae of life ,the sound of a friends foot steps ,the light of early evening in the summer ,cherry blossom
And the smell of food and sewerage .The author paints vivid pictures with her words small still lives and vast landscapes and adds music and song to the page to pad it to complexity
It’s not often that I’m left knowing that I shall remember a book for ever but I know this book in its magnificence and it’s tiny moments of humanity will be with me evermore
How I missed this book for so long I don’t know but I’m sure this will be one of my top books this year

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cazza

Wonderful Story and likeable characters

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 April 2022

Verified Purchase

I saw this on the Sarah Cox programme, but waited for the paperback to come out before buying. It is a love story set in London and Florence. It starts towards the end of WW2 in Italy when Evelyn, an art expert trying to track down art stolen by the Nazis, meets Ulysses, a young soldier and his commanding Officer Darnley. Ulysses saves a man’s life and from there the story goes through the rest of the 20th century and into the 21st, following Ulysses from London to Florence. I loved the characters, particularly Cress and, of course, Claude! I like South American ‘magical’ realism and romanticism, so liked the unusual aspects of the story, especially Claude. I did wonder about the last chapter (apart from the very last paragraph), where Evelyn writes about her first visit to Florence. It seemed out of place, rather ‘stuck on’ the end to make a point. Should have been earlier in the novel. It would be churlish to knock off a star when I enjoyed the book so much.

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Alison Gould

Gosh!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 August 2022

Verified Purchase

All I can say is please read this extraordinarily special book - it is a captivating, enchanting, magical, earthy, don't want to finish saga of people you really really want to know. About half or more is set in Florence which I know well and find as compelling as the characters do. Walking with them round the golden city is almost as good as being there - well, at least saves on travel. And the horror of the floods, which I remember, are so viscerally described. I am sad to have finished it.

One person found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Another unique marvel from Sarah Winman

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 June 2021

Verified Purchase

Characters you wish you lived alongside, description that makes you feel you are in Florence, history retold in a fun way.

A book that doesn’t fit in a genre. A unique piece that should be enjoyed by all.

4 people found this helpful

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