One of the joys of reading for me is finding a story like this one. It’s one that is so full of life, of characters whose lives are bound to each other in such a beautiful way with such a depth of love for each other. While this is a very different story than Sarah Winman’s Tin Man, I remember being so moved by the relationships between the characters there, too.

Ulysses Temper is a young British solider and one-time globe-maker, Evelyn Skinner is a sexagenarian art historian and possible spy. She has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the ruins and relive her memories of the time she encountered EM Forster and had her heart stolen by an Italian maid in a particular Florentine room with a view. Halfway through the year something does happen: she falls in love. Fraser is older and lives in Denmark. Does he realise what he’s taking on? Will he eventually reject her, as a previous lover did? It’s perilous; the journal acquires a layer of jeopardy. But they love each other. Maybe the relationship will work out. Peggy Temper — an abused women with multiple talents. But also the woman with the golden voice and the swaying hips. historical fiction: beauties of Florence Italy — great characters- story - prose - friendships - love - laughter - heartbreaking & heartwarming moments - wisdom - relatable- and a great tribute to ITALY!!Most readers experienced it as a joyful, almost noble and serene ode to Florence, Italian art, art history, and the optimism with which large parts of Europe had to be rebuilt after WWII. It is the part of this book that I really enjoyed as well. Beautiful prose. The author does comedy really well. Ginny, Col's daughter — Cressy called her engrossing and she was engrossing, till she opened her mouth and a kid tumbled out. This is a wonderful character driven story of kindred spirits which takes us on an emotional journey from Florence to the East End of London. In 1944 Evelyn Skinner and Margaret Somebody or other meet Private Ulysses Temper of the 8th Army in the Tuscan Hills. Evelyn and Ulysses form a connection and a bond that will remain for many years. Meanwhile in London, Uly’s wife Peg is enduring the war years as best she can with some ‘comforting’ from Eddie an American soldier. Post war the action alternates between the two areas - in London it centres on The Stoat and Parot with landlord Col and wonderful customers like Cress and Pete. Still Life sweeps across four decades and into the lives of characters that will steal your heart. I can’t even choose a favourite character; they are all to-die-for. We have Claude, a talking parrot full of wisdom and one-liners; old Cressy, a loving father figure to everyone; Pete, a goofy but talented piano player. And so many more. I was easily transported to an earlier time (the end of WWII- with these collective characters — and their fresh-enjoyable (often playful), dialogue with each other.

i am also not the type of reader who appreciates when authors make certain stylistic choices, such as not using quotations marks. theres soooo much dialogue in this, so it drove me up the wall. The second thing is to do with the age of Evelyn and Cressy. Both integral to the story and already seniors at the beginning, we grow to love them and can't imagine life without them, but realistically they are old... As events unfolded, I found myself figuratively sweating for them to stay safe. No spoilers here. The power of still life lies precisely in this triviality. Because it is a world of reliability. Of mutuality between objects that are there, and people who are not. Paused time in ghostly absence."

Still Life is simultaneously expansive and intimate, a heady brew of disasters, both natural and manmade, of death and life, of the power of great art and, most especially, the resonance of those loves we carry for a lifetime. A truly spectacular achievement. I've never read anything quite like it." - Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves Beautiful art opens our eyes to the beauty of the world, Ulysses. It repositions our sight and judgement. Captures forever that which is fleeting. A meager stain in the corridors of

This novel had so many things I love - first, some wonderfully memorable characters: Ulysses Temper - a British young man, whom we first meet during his stint in Italy during WWII. While there, he met the effusive and erudite sexagenarian, Evelyn Skinner, an art historian, a unique person. Their short meeting left an impression on each other. 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. Beautiful art opens our eyes to the beauty of the world, Ulysses. It repositions our sight and judgment. Captures forever that which is fleeting. A meager stain in the corridors of history, that’s all we are. A little mark of scuff. Still Life” is a novel that describes little intimacies and connections which eventually intertwine and form a portrait of lives well lived. This artfully constructed work of historical fiction unfolds small stories of ordinary people. Events take place over a span of thirty five years and four decades as we follow the challenges and complexities confronting an array characters as they go about their daily lives.But at the crux of this beautiful story is a young British soldier, Ulysses Temper, that we meet during the war in 1944 while he is in the Tuscan hills as the Allied troops are waiting to enter Florence and his chance meeting with art historian Evelyn Skinner, sixty-something years old, and wanting to liaise with Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Officers to salvage paintings from the ruins. It is in the wine cellar in the ruins of a Tuscan villa where Private Temper and Captain Darnley and Evelyn Skinner share bottles of wine, 1902 Carruades de Lafite, and intimate conversation as bombs explode overhead discussing that the human heart is capable of both grace and fury. It is during these hours of this very special evening that a fierce connection or one of kindred spirits is forged between Evelyn and Ulysses that will last a lifetime. In Tuscany Evelyn Skinner relives her memories of her 21st birthday and her meeting EM Forster in a pensione in Florence where she had a lovely room with a view of the Arno. A love story, if a somewhat atypical one. A story of friendship, of family, both the ones we are born into and the ones that we create from the people we meet as we travel through life. It is the story of war, the destruction to the land, and the destruction to the people whose lives are affected, and the friendships that were born of the time. A love story to a place and time, and to love, in all its many forms. An ode to art, to a time and place, and a shared ’belief that a combination of intellect and beauty can make the world a better place.’ And then there is the particular quality of light in Florence, which helps one forgive the fact that it is quite smelly, for divinity must always be accompanied by mundanity. And where a central character is a parrot named Claude that swears like a sailor and quotes Shakespeare. (Hence that gorgeous cover illustration.) Apropos of nothing, I just read an excellent review of ‘Beautiful World, Where Are You’ by Sally Rooney, and found myself swooning over the book. I have yet to read Rooney, but that title is so epically wistful. Sigh.

How to convey writing that is so suffused with warmth and wit, color and energy? Themes that are enormous in their strokes and yet intimate in detail? Landscapes that belong to a particular moment yet are timeless in their effect? Still Life is anything but still - it dances and sings, weeps and trills with delight. This is as lovely a novel as I can hope to read, one that offers both hope and longing during a time when they seem too dear to hold onto. Yes, yes, and yes. There is so much doom-and-gloom and existential malaise in our world right now. So far, 2021 has been much worse than last year, simply if you look at the inexorable toll that Covid-19 has taken, not only in terms of friends and loved ones lost to the pandemic, but the erosion of our own simple humanity. At this point in time, I am soul-weary. However, I appreciated the vast array of personalities and the immense effort of the author to make this an informative experience. It just felt everything was overstaying the welcome, sort of. And too familiar. A lot of word dumping. Too much for me. L]ush...Winman covers much ground, including the devastating 1966 flood of the Arno, a cameo appearance by E.M. Forster, and many rich sections about art, relationships and the transcendent beauty of Tuscany, and while it occasionally feels like two novels stitched into one, for the most part it hangs together. Readers will enjoy this paean to the power of love and art." - Publishers Weekly Winman is very good at writing whimsy comedy. And she's good at creating big hearted characters with modest intellectual aspirations. Her characters are like people in TV commercials - brimming with goodness and generosity and laughter. They are what we would like people to be like rather than like how people really are. It's a novel that needs to be read as a feel-good fairy story. And there are sections of it that work well in this regard.Peg's "dalliance" with another man results in a baby girl. Ulysses adores her as if she were his biological daughter. He's a better parent than Peggy could ever be. The pub is filled with interesting characters - Col, the publican, Pete, an accomplished pianist struggling to make it, Cres, a father figure to Ulysses. To make things even more interesting, there's an extraordinary blue parrot named Claude. Claude is quite the character and a philosopher of sorts. 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 Alys — the young girl (cute, but unconvincing - her behavior did not correspond with her age) - who had to endure an unknown father and a mother devoid of mother's instinct. A must-read for anyone wanting to escape the everyday; Still Life by Sarah Winman is the absolute ultimate in daydreaming decadence. Still Life by Sarah Winman Summary