June 1, 2021
In 1944 Tuscany, English soldier Ulysses ducks into the wine cellar of a deserted villa, where he meets middle-aged art historian Evelyn, there to salvage paintings as the bombs fall. She's there, too, to recall E.M. Forster, who haunts a narrative that unfolds over decades as this chance encounter shapes Ulysses' life. Following the Costa short-listed Tin Man.
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September 13, 2021
Winman’s lush fourth novel (after Tin Man) begins with a chance meeting in Tuscany in 1944 between a British art historian and an army private. Evelyn Skinner, 64, befriends 24-year-old Ulysses Temper while holed up in a wine cellar as bombs fall. Their paths soon diverge, but Evelyn’s suggestion that Ulysses revisit Florence on his own makes a lasting impact. In 1946 London, where Ulysses is now a civilian in a fractured relationship with Peg—the hometown girl he married before the war—the reader meets Alys, the daughter Peg had with an American soldier she met during her husband’s absence, and the endearing London pub friends who become Ulysses’s family, some of whom eventually join him in Italy in the early 1950s. After the war, Evelyn shuttles between Kent and Bloomsbury, teaching art history and spending time with devoted female lovers. Ulysses and Evelyn finally reconnect in Florence 22 years after their first meeting. 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.
Starred review from September 1, 2021
In this thoroughly warm, witty, entertaining, and character-driven novel spanning decades, Winman (Tin Man, 2018) shares bighearted ideas about friendship, love, art, and community. On a fateful night during WWII, young soldier Ulysses meets Evelyn, a sixtysomething art historian arrived in Italy to salvage paintings. They are absolutely lovestruck--platonically, as Ulysses is in love with Peg and Evelyn is a lesbian. From that night, their lives will circle around each other and take unexpected turns that lead both Brits to Florence after the war. It is there that the utterly charming Ulysses will find his people, while being surrounded by history, art, and food (all richly and lovingly described). While Still Life is slim on plot and heavy on coincidence, it is hard to envision a reader who won't be smitten by Winman's characters and their banter, like old Cressy, who takes his advice from a tree, and Claude, the blue parrot who may be Shakespeare reincarnated. These lives may not be the stuff of legend, but they are still life: "The power of still life lies precisely in this triviality. Because it is a world of reliability . . . . Yet within these forms something powerful is retained: continuity. Memory. Family."
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Starred review from August 15, 2021
An epic about a family of friends who make the city of Florence their home in the mid-to-late 20th century. Evelyn Skinner, an art teacher and Englishwoman approaching 64 years of age, meets Ulysses Temper, a 24-year-old private from London, on the side of an Italian road in 1944, while bombs are falling on distant hills. At its core, this slowly unfolding narrative is the story of their friendship, though it is also a story of the creation of a family of friends, transplanted from London to Italy: pub owner Col; pub worker, amateur singer, and eventual mother Peg; pianist Pete; elderly friend Cressy; child Alys; a bright blue parrot, Claude; and ultimately, of course, Evelyn. This story winds and wanders through the years, in the end covering 1901 to 1979, as Ulysses and Cressy establish a successful pensione in Florence, Alys grows up, and Evelyn and the others grow older. This is a slow-paced narrative that unfolds as a love story to Florence and a love story to love--romantic, platonic, familial, parental, friend, community, Sapphic, and gay love are all celebrated. Art history is often mentioned, as are parallels to the pensione in E.M. Forster's A Room With a View. While this is a book to settle into, the narrative feels almost breathless at times, in part due to the lack of quotation marks around the dialogue, which makes it feel as if the unknown narrator is relating a long story deep into the night. An unexpected treatise on the many forms love and beauty can take, set against the backdrop of Florence.
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