Still Lives: The stunning Reese Witherspoon Book Club mystery

Product Information

Even those whose usual avocations are of the most ‘prosaic’ nature unconsciously become admirers of poetry and art in Italy”. this book is exactly like a still life painting - everyone is going to get something different out of it. for some, it may not resonate. but for others, it may be the story that speaks to them. A book begging to be read on the beach, with the sun warming the sand and salt in the air: pure escapism. Tuscany, 1944: As Allied troops advance and bombs fall around deserted villages, a young English soldier, Ulysses Temper, finds himself in the wine cellar of a deserted villa. There, he has a chance encounter with Evelyn Skinner, a middle-aged art historian who has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the ruins and recall long-forgotten memories of her own youth. In each other, Ulysses and Evelyn find a kindred spirit amidst the rubble of war-torn Italy, and set off on a course of events that will shape Ulysses's life for the next four decades. In Tuscany, during World War II, Evelyn Skinner, a 64-year-old art historian, meets Ulysses Temper, a young British soldier. Their chance encounter forms an enduring bond of friendship that leaves a lasting impression on Ulysses and helps shape the rest of his life. Meanwhile, Evelyn is in Florence trying to rescue paintings from the war and reminisce on her first visit to Florence when she fell in love with a beautiful maid named Livia.

All the problems arose for me when Evelyn Skinner is the focus. It's a shame because she's a good character - a bon-vivant lesbian who always has a ready smile. She's a good character except when the author tries to convince us she's an authority on art history. The book begins with her and begins badly. It's odd that a novel with feminist aspirations allows a woman to do a job women were not entitled to at the time, that of being on the front lines as art conservers. There's a silly scene in the Boboli gardens when a sniper must have a modern high-powered rifle to be able to take shots at people in the gardens from the tower at Bellosguardo. And it's here the crass sermons on art history begin which reminded me of the stuff I used to translate in mass market tourist guides. Tuscany, 1944: As Allied troops advance and bombs fall around deserted villages, a young English soldier, Ulysses Temper, finds himself in the wine cellar of a deserted villa. There, he has a chance encounter with Evelyn Skinner, a middle-aged art historian who has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the ruins and recall long-forgotten memories of her own youth. In each other, Ulysses and Evelyn find a kindred spirit amongst the rubble of war-torn Italy, and set off on a course of events that will shape Ulysses's life for the next four decades. I'm not convinced that the book was either story- or character driven. It was issue-driven, hence the multitude of characters to introduce as many issues as possible into the tale.

Still Life”….is wonderful - historical novel. (very different from “Tin Man”…but equally differently terrific). Whenever I read a book about Florence I like to see if I could have helped with the research. It wasn't long before I detected the first error here. The statue of Dante was not beside the church in 1944 as the author places it; it was in the middle of piazza Santa Croce and only moved after the flood of 1966 when the first surge of A captivating, bighearted, richly tapestried story of people brought together by love, war, art, flood, and the ghost of E. M. Forster, by the celebrated author of Tin Man

The author undoubtedly has a talent to make words sing. This was alphabet music. She covered several decades of European renaissance in her descriptions of places and people. Her characters were likable and lovable and often hilariously funny. Cressy's dialogue with prunus serrulata(Japanese Cherry blossom tree) tugged at my heartstrings. His devotion to Claude,the philosophical parrot, guaranteed entertainment. The terrible, but comical incident with Davy; Col's infatuation with his wailing 1930s 's, right old boneshaker ambulance, which promised to be a charisma lobotomy, said Peg; and a few other incidents brought much joy and laughter about.Zadie Smith famously rewrote EM Forster's Howard End; here Sarah Winman mischievously takes on A Room with a View. The first thing to be said it that Sarah Winman is no Zadie Smith. Mostly this is a matter of intellect. Zadie's is more rigorous, subtle and insightful. In fact it's often failings of intellect and failings to depict intellect that let this novel down for me. Art and creatives wander in and out of this novel as decades pass. Ulysses and Evelyn continue to ramble ever nearer to reconnecting. The trajectory of the novel promises that they will. Even the first epitaph Winman selects for her novel suggests as much: “Two people pulling each other into Salvation is the only theme I find worthwhile. – E. M. Forester, Commonplace Book.” But along the way to that reunion, the reader accompanies each character through life and witnesses the memories and relationships they cherish most. There are moments in life so monumental and still that the memory can never be retrieved without a catch to the throat or an interruption to the beat of the heart. Can never be retrieved without the rumbling disquiet of how close that moment came to not having happened at all”. Private Ulysses Temper is a soldier with the British army in 1944, chasing the Germans out of the Tuscan hills at the end of WW2, when he meets Evelyn Skinner, a sixty year old art historian, on a road in Tuscany. She has come to Italy to help salvage art works from the ruins of war and over wine and cheese in a dusty cellar, regales him with tales of visiting Florence as a young woman, where she first fell in love, met E.M. Forster and developed a passion for art. Little does Ulysses realise then how much this chance meeting will sew the seeds that will work to radically change his life before he finally meets Evelyn again.