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By Lauren Fox

Nov. 2, 2021

STILL LIFE By Sarah Winman

Historical fiction hits closest to the bone when it illuminates what we know to be true: that we move through capital-H History, but in each moment, the spotlight shines brightest on the unremarkable details of our own lives. Momentous events occur, and sometimes we’re caught up in them, but we are — simultaneously, inescapably — the main characters in our own stories. Sarah Winman’s sweeping “Still Life” is a parade of small stories, intimate connections and complex characters whose lives illuminate the tedium and cataclysms of the 20th century.

Ulysses Temper is the modest, searching, wandering protagonist. (We’re told early that he’s named after a winning greyhound, but sometimes a cigar is not just a cigar.) We meet him as a young soldier in Italy in 1944; almost immediately he crosses paths with Evelyn Skinner, a 64-year-old lover of life and an enthusiastic art historian. She imparts life-changing wisdom about love and art and the city of Florence. Their paths diverge, and he takes her words with him back to London, where he resumes working at a pub. Soon enough, Ulysses and his makeshift family — his ex-wife’s young daughter, Alys; his friend Cress; and a talking parrot named Claude — move to Italy, where Ulysses has inherited a large apartment that they convert into a thriving pensione . Cress, who was able to communicate with trees in London, can also communicate with trees in Italy.

It’s hard to encompass all that happens in this whopper of a book, partly because it spans four decades (and more than 450 pages), but even more so because much of it is just the stuff of life, suffused with copious dialogue so casual and idiomatic that it almost subverts its own demand for attention. Ulysses’ wife, Peg, falls in love with another soldier; she gets pregnant. Ulysses continues to love Peg and eventually raises the child on his own, since Peg is not fit for motherhood. One character finds love in his golden years. Another finds love early, and nothing else compares. During the war, Ulysses saved a life in Florence. Some years later, he is repaid for his kindness.

What holds these characters together is the love of a chosen family and the role of art in maintaining their commitments to one another. Much of the story takes place in Florence, and one particular capital-H Historical moment is the 1966 flood of the Arno, during which millions of books and works of art were destroyed, and countless livelihoods were obliterated — each, Winman reminds us, meaningless without the other.

The novel’s articulation of faith is spoken by Evelyn, who rhapsodizes in the early pages, “Beautiful art opens our eyes to the beauty of the world, Ulysses. It repositions our sight and judgment.” This is a theme that runs through the novel, and it’s a bold authorial move, insisting upon the transformative power of aesthetics. Winman makes the case over and over again that beauty is truth, truth beauty, and of course it raises the reader’s expectations. If the book itself isn’t transcendent, the scaffolding will not hold.

But the scaffolding, for the most part, does hold (although I could have done without the talking parrot, who seems to have flown in from another story). The real magic of “Still Life” is the elevation of the ordinary, the unabashed consecration of human experiences.

Early in the novel, after Ulysses’ wife asks for a divorce, and then sleeps with him, he ruminates on the scope of his life: “Somewhere between an atom and a star was this.” He orders a meal: “He asked her what the specials were, and she moved close to his ear. Tortellini in brodo , she purred. It was as erotic a moment as he’d had in years. He felt giddy and stumbled against the chair.” These are humans in orbit, connected by the staying power of heartbreak and kindness. And here is Winman describing an ordinary Italian summer day: “Golden light edged around the dark gray clouds and Cress used the phrase ‘unconscionable beauty’ in describing the garden. Cress was becoming poetry.”

Sentence after sentence, character by character, “Still Life” becomes poetry.

Lauren Fox’s latest novel is “Send for Me.”

STILL LIFE By Sarah Winman 464 pp. Putnam. $27.

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Sarah Winman

464 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2021

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"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 history, that's all we are. A little mark of scuff. One hundred and fifty years ago Napoleon breathed the same air as we do now. The batallion of time marches on. Art versus humanity is not the question, Ulysses. One doesn't exist without the other. Art is the antidote. Is that enough to make it important? Well yes, I think it is."

"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."

"So, time heals. Mostly. Sometimes carelessly. And in unspecting moments, the pain catches and reminds on of all that's been missing. The fulcrum of what might have been. But then it passes. Winter moves into spring and swallows return. The proximity of new skin returns to the sheets. Beauty does what is required. Jobs fulfill and conversations inspire. Loneliness becomes a mere Sunday. Scattered clothes. Empty bowls. Rotting fruit. Passing time. But still life in all its beauty and complexity."

clock This article was published more than 2 years ago

Sarah Winman’s ‘Still Life’ feels like a Saturday night among old friends

I’m not promising too much by claiming that Sarah Winman’s “ Still Life ” is a tonic for wanderlust and a cure for loneliness. It’s that rare, affectionate novel that makes one feel grateful to have been carried along. Unfurling with no more hurry than a Saturday night among old friends, the story celebrates the myriad ways love is expressed and families are formed.

That may sound suspiciously sentimental, but the joys of “Still Life” are cured in a furnace of tragedy. The action begins in Italy during World War II. As bombs fall around them, a young British soldier named Ulysses runs across Miss Evelyn Skinner, a 64-year-old art historian. She’s been commissioned to help identify masterpieces hidden in the Tuscan hills to protect them from theft and destruction. When Ulysses questions the relevance of her work amid the human carnage of war, she’s ready: “Beautiful art opens our eyes to the beauty of the world, Ulysses. It repositions our sight and judgment. Captures forever that which is fleeting,” Evelyn says. “Art versus humanity is not the question, Ulysses. One doesn’t exist without the other.”

Ulysses, an unusually thoughtful and compassionate man, will never forget that lesson, but he has no reason to think he’ll ever see Evelyn again. The war, after all, is a great scrambler of human beings, a calamity as adept at forging relationships as breaking them apart. Indeed, the rest of “Still Life” — some 400 pages spread over several decades — takes place in the shadow of that common trauma of missing someone.

From the battlefields of Europe, Ulysses returns to London’s East End, particularly to a shabby Georgian tavern called the Stoat and Parot, home to a preternaturally clever bird. “Ulysses pushed open the door,” Winman writes, “and the fire to his right gave off a ripe old smell, all sour and smarting bodies. The old ones were huddled around the hearth exactly as he’d left them: same faces less teeth.” These are the weathered characters of Ulysses’ adolescence, a network of bartenders, gamblers and drinkers who care for each other like the world depends on it — because it does. They may know nothing about the “beautiful art” of Florence, but they’re all master sculptors of what Winman calls “the haunting aspect of devotion.”

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Chief among these eccentrics is Col, who owns the Stoat and Parot. Disappointed in love — like everybody else here — Col buries his grief beneath a shell of grumpy sarcasm. “He knew something had gone wrong,” Winman writes, “but for the life of him he didn’t know how to put it right.” The usual target of Col’s insults is his best friend, Old Cressy, who “could fix anything, find anything, and was everyone’s go-to man in need.”

Winman has perfected a style as comfortable and agile as the greetings and anecdotes these old friends have traded for years. She moves among them, licking up phrases and glances, catching the sharp savor of this smoky place so well you’ll taste it on your lips.

The person most responsible for drawing Ulysses back home is Peg, a singer at the Stoat and Parot, who also happens to be his wife. They married right before he left for war — purely a financial arrangement, they claim — but everybody else can see what’s going on. “He couldn’t take his eyes off her,” Winman writes. “He never would.” They have the kind of elastic fidelity to each other that somehow can’t be completely broken or fully embraced.

As soon as Ulysses returns home, “they got divorced,” Winman writes, “and got more friendly.” That’s a typical Winman maneuver, sly and heartbreaking. Ulysses is even happy to play stepdad to Peg’s child, the product of an affair with an American soldier who vanished and left Peg pining.

It’s no coincidence that Ulysses earns a living making globes — delicate, hand-painted models of a planet recently blown apart and reassembled by war. That’s essentially what he and his friends are doing, too: remaking the world as best they can with the bits of paint and paste they can scrap together. The old borders that once outlined what a family is have been burned away; the standard of respectability has been knocked off its axis.

When Ulysses inherits a large house in Italy, his little community in London could have fallen apart, but instead, it moves with him to Florence. Here, he and the old gang have a chance to design an idyllic life entirely devoted to beauty, leisure and hospitality. Seeing them again is “like an infusion of blood straight to the heart,” Winman writes. “All that love.”

Under the spell of Winman’s narration, this seems entirely possible — and endlessly charming. “Still Life,” like real life, sometimes appears to have no forward momentum except the gentle repetition of daily routines and the passage of time. But the novel never feels anything less than captivating because Winman creates such a flawless illusion of spontaneity, an atmosphere capable of sustaining these characters’ macabre wit, comedy of manners and poignant longing.

Looking at his assembled friends one night, Ulysses thinks, “You’d want to be with them. . . . You’d want to be part of them.”

Read “Still Life,” and you can be.

Ron Charles writes about books for The Washington Post and hosts TotallyHipVideoBookReview.com .

By Sarah Winman

G.P. Putnam’s Sons. 452 pp. $27

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by Sarah Winman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 2, 2021

An unexpected treatise on the many forms love and beauty can take, set against the backdrop of Florence.

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.

Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-593-33075-3

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021

LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL FICTION

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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.

When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.

Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024

ISBN: 9781250178633

Page Count: 480

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023

FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

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by Leigh Bardugo ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 9, 2024

Lush, gorgeous, precise language and propulsive plotting sweep readers into a story as intelligent as it is atmospheric.

In 16th-century Madrid, a crypto-Jew with a talent for casting spells tries to steer clear of the Inquisition.

Luzia Cotado, a scullion and an orphan, has secrets to keep: “It was a game she and her mother had played, saying one thing and thinking another, the bits and pieces of Hebrew handed down like chipped plates.” Also handed down are “refranes”—proverbs—in “not quite Spanish, just as Luzia was not quite Spanish.” When Luzia sings the refranes, they take on power. “Aboltar cazal, aboltar mazal” (“A change of scene, a change of fortune”) can mend a torn gown or turn burnt bread into a perfect loaf; “Quien no risica, no rosica” (“Whoever doesn’t laugh, doesn’t bloom”) can summon a riot of foliage in the depths of winter. The Inquisition hangs over the story like Chekhov’s famous gun on the wall. When Luzia’s employer catches her using magic, the ambitions of both mistress and servant catapult her into fame and danger. A new, even more ambitious patron instructs his supernatural servant, Guillén Santángel, to train Luzia for a magical contest. Santángel, not Luzia, is the familiar of the title; he has been tricked into trading his freedom and luck to his master’s family in exchange for something he no longer craves but can’t give up. The novel comes up against an issue common in fantasy fiction: Why don’t the characters just use their magic to solve all their problems? Bardugo has clearly given it some thought, but her solutions aren’t quite convincing, especially toward the end of the book. These small faults would be harder to forgive if she weren’t such a beautiful writer. Part fairy tale, part political thriller, part romance, the novel unfolds like a winter tree bursting into unnatural bloom in response to one of Luzia’s refranes, as she and Santángel learn about power, trust, betrayal, and love.

Pub Date: April 9, 2024

ISBN: 9781250884251

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024

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Still Life: a timeless novel celebrating art and life entwined

Book review: set during a pivotal period in european history, sarah winman delivers a micro story on a macro scale.

Sarah Winman, author of Still Life

In the small hours of November 5th, 1966, the river Arno burst its banks and flooded Florence. The Renaissance city was devastated by some 600,000 tonnes of mud that remained in its wake. Fifty thousand Florentine families lost their homes. Thousands of masterpieces of art and and rare books were damaged or destroyed as galleries, churches and museums sat submerged in mud that is reported to have reached 6.8m (22ft) in height in some parts of the city.

In the immediate aftermath, hundreds of young people travelled from across the Continent to help with the great clean-up, rescuing priceless paintings from the Uffizi galleries and providing aid to the broken-hearted Florentines. These spontaneous volunteers became known as the angeli del fango – the mud angels.

This is the world of Sarah Winman’s fourth novel, in which the beauty of art collides with the random tragedies of life and is not always victorious. And yet the response – how people choose to persevere, to drag each other through – somehow makes the suffering worthwhile.

From the award-winning author of When God Was a Rabbit and Tin Man, Still Life intercepts a young British soldier, Ulysses Temper, with Evelyn Skinner, a gay sexagenarian art historian and possible spy. It is 1944 and they are hiding in the ruined cellar of a Tuscan villa as bombs fall. Evelyn has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the wreckage of war and reminisce about the time she encountered EM Forster as she fell in love with a Florentine maid.

Ulysses is utterly changed by their encounter – the seeds she plants in his mind about truth and beauty take root and ultimately grow into a worldview that will alter the trajectory of his life, and those around him, for the ensuing four decades we spend in his company.

Transversing across that pivotal time in European history and moving from the dirty smog of London’s East End to the sensuous piazzas of Florence, Winman’s ability to deliver a micro story on a macro scale is impressive. There is something very particular about the prose that sets her apart from other contemporary novelists. The omniscient narrator of Still Life bears more resemblance to that of a classic novel than might be currently considered fashionable – the tone is warm and avoids the chilly vernacular of many of her peers – and Winmanis unafraid to infuse the prose with moments of magical realism via a sentient tree here, a cognisant parrot there.

The novel presupposes that magic is all around us – perhaps we just call it other things, superstition, coincidence, serendipity, instinct, luck. And it offers a rich education in art appreciation and social history. All of which, when delivered with the author’s technical wizardry, elevates the work as one that will resonate long after this particular moment in time. It is timeless, not trendy; proactive, not reactive.

At the centre of the novel is a question – what is the heart capable of? Ulysses suggests an answer: “grace and fury”. Throughout the narrative, the complex, compelling characters are constantly pushing their hearts to the absolute limit of endurance.

Her previous novels have shown Winman as one of the greatest chroniclers of grief – the great cost of love – and of the ghosts that haunt our lives – regret, missed opportunities, lost connections. In Still Life, she emerges now as the great narrator of hope. When all feels lost, the love and kindness of others can revive us. Winman is unafraid to chart this sentiment but never slips into sentimentality. There is a constant friction in the text between the “conspiracy of beauty everywhere” and “the acknowledgement that if such beauty exists then so does the opposite”. A beautiful life is not a perfect one, with an absence of grief, but a full one that is worthy of grieving.

Pete, the gifted piano player in Winman’s supporting cast, writes a song about the mud angels. It is a ballad, “about good rising out of need, about love in all its forms, about kindness and looking out for one another, and only the third verse was about art, but even that was about the paradox of meaning. It was classic Pete. Took you one way, took you back, and then delivered the punch.”

His lyrics serve as the perfect description of Winman’s novel, a celebration of “art and life intwined” that delivers to us solace, hope and the courage to dream again. We must save art, because in the end, it is the art that will save us. Classic Winman.

Helen Cullen

Helen Cullen, a contributor to The Irish Times, is a novelist and critic

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The summer we crossed europe in the rain; ireland 1970-2020; car bombs and barrack busters, an expert’s secret rules of drinking in an irish bar, former us prosecutor on the justice system: ‘when i see kids come into court in chains, i can’t help thinking of slavery’, an african history of africa by zeinab bedawi: a richly rewarding sweep that challenges preconceptions, jo spain: ‘i rely on the next book, contract or tv show to pay that mortgage. i’ve no guaranteed salary’, irish in london: ‘nobody was making me stay. i could have left at any time and gone home to sligo ... that was 24 years ago’, ‘i’m alone pretty much all the time. the older i become, the less hopeful i am this will change’, david mcwilliams: a small town in co kerry and a formula for rejuvenating rural ireland, former taoiseach leo varadkar raises concerns about racism in late late show interview, ozempic changed the lives of obesity patients. and then we had to stop prescribing it, latest stories, munster secure another victory over the lions to wrap up stellar south africa tour, family of minister for justice evacuated following hoax bomb threat, aontú calls for ‘irish sea border in terms of people’ to ensure stricter immigration checks in northern ireland, frenetic finish sees antrim strike late to beat wexford, premier league wrap: late penalty sees burnley rescue a draw with manchester united.

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About the Book

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.

Tuscany, 1944: As Allied troops advance and bombs sink 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 intent on salvaging paintings from the ruins. In each other, Ulysses and Evelyn find a kindred spirit amidst the rubble of war-torn Italy, and paint a course of events that will shape Ulysses’ life for the next four decades. Returning home to London, Ulysses reimmerses himself in his crew at The Stoat and Parot --- a motley mix of pub crawlers and eccentrics --- all the while carrying with him his Italian evocations. So, when an unexpected inheritance brings him back to where it all began, Ulysses knows better than to tempt fate: he must return to the Tuscan hills. With beautiful prose, extraordinary tenderness, and bursts of humor and light, STILL LIFE is a sweeping portrait of unforgettable individuals who come together to make a family, and a deeply drawn celebration of beauty and love in all its forms.

Still Life by Sarah Winman

Publication Date: September 13, 2022
Genres: Fiction
Paperback: 480 pages
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons
ISBN-10: 0593330765
ISBN-13: ‎9780593330760

The Literary Edit

Still Life Book Review

Founding and hosting The Bondi Literary Salon is – without question – one of the biggest sources of joy for me; and there are few things I like better than getting together with fellow book lovers to discuss our latest read. It’s not allowed me to forge friendships with people I wouldn’t otherwise have met; but it’s also a great way to keep to a reading schedule (of sorts). And while I continue to count down the days until the end of lockdown, having a monthly meet-up – albeit via Zoom – has certainly given me something to look forward to.

And thus it was that when I saw that Clay and Hannah from Bouquiniste in Kiama were also hosting a book club in September, I immediately signed up. A one-off event with author Sarah Winman discussing her latest book, Still Life, it gave me an excuse to move the book to the top of my TBR pile, and I read it one sun-drenched, winter weekend in Sydney, sitting on my window seat; not allowed to leave the house.

The type of book we all need in our lives will navigating the trench that is Covid-19, from the very first page of Still Life I was transported to a land faraway, when a chance encounter between sixty-four-year-old art historian Evelyn Skinner and twenty-four-year-old British soldier Ulysses Temper takes place at the foot of the Tuscan Hills. And while the meeting is a fleeting one; it’s one that leaves a lasting impression on both characters, even though it will be years before they see each other again. Because while both characters return to London, fate will have them meet again in the beautiful city of Florence, after a string of near misses sees them reunited for good.

A richly layered tapestry that fuses friendship with loss and heartbreak with and love, Still Life has it all: vivid and vibrant characters, two contrasting settings brought to life by both the characters that lie therein and Winman’s wonderfully evocative writing. From the magic and splendour of Florence to the gritty backdrop of a pub in East End London, Still Life is full of magic and joy and art and history, and it offers the reader a wonderful depiction of the richness of the Florentine heritage, from the wine to the food to the glorious cast of characters.

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

By the bestselling, prize-winning author of When God was a Rabbit and Tin Man, Still Life is a beautiful, big-hearted, richly tapestried story of people brought together by love, war, art, flood… and the ghost of E.M. Forster.

We just need to know what the heart’s capable of, Evelyn.

And do you know what it’s capable of?

I do. Grace and fury.

It’s 1944 and in the ruined wine cellar of a Tuscan villa, as the Allied troops advance and bombs fall around them, two strangers meet and share an extraordinary evening together.

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.

These two unlikely people find kindred spirits in each other and Evelyn’s talk of truth and beauty plants a seed in Ulysses mind that will shape the trajectory of his life – and of those who love him – for the next four decades.

Moving from the Tuscan Hills, to the smog of the East End and the piazzas of Florence, Still Life is a sweeping, mischievous, richly-peopled novel about beauty, love, family and fate.

Buy Still Life from Bookshop.org , Book Depository , Waterstones , Amazon or Amazon AU .

Sarah Winman author bio

Sarah Winman (born 1964) is a British actress and author. In 2011 her debut novel When God Was a Rabbit became an international bestseller and won Winman several awards including New Writer of the Year in the Galaxy National Book Awards.

More Sarah Winman Books

Sarah Winman has also written A Year of Marvellous Ways , When God Was a Rabbit and Tinman .

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Summary and Study Guide

Still Life is a contemporary work of historical fiction by British author and actress Sarah Winman. The novel traces the impact of World War II on Italy and the British expatriates living there. Still Life shows the lives of LGBTQ+ characters during the mid-20th century, when gay and lesbian relationships were legally and/or culturally prohibited. The novel was a Sunday Times bestseller as well as a Guardian Best Book of 2021, a winner of the InWords Literary Award, and the recipient of many other prizes. Winman is the author of three other novels, including the international bestseller When God Was a Rabbit (2011).

This guide uses the 2021 G. P. Putnam's Sons Kindle edition of Still Life .

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Plot Summary

The novel is divided into nine chapters, and each chapter focuses on one to several years from the 1940s to the 1970s in England and Italy.

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The novel begins in 1944, toward the end of World War II in Italy. Margaret and Evelyn Skinner , two older British women with a passion for art history, take refuge from the war in a villa in Tuscany. Evelyn is attempting to help Allied forces track down and protect precious art works in war-occupied territories; she and Margaret used to be lovers, but now they’re only friends. Meanwhile, a British soldier named Ulysses Temper is serving with the Allied forces as they begin to liberate Florence. He meets Evelyn on the road because she is looking for someone to speak with about the art treasures in the area. He brings her to meet his commander and good friend Captain Darnley, who also has a passion for art. They take Evelyn to see a priceless altarpiece, but when enemy artillery strikes their headquarters, Darnley and Ulysses drive Evelyn back to her villa.

Meanwhile, in London, Ulysses’s wife, Peggy, is trying to start a new life without him. She works as a bartender in a pub but must endure constant harassment from the male patrons who find her attractive. Peggy wants to date Eddie, an American soldier, because she hopes he will bring her back to America with him. Peggy and Ulysses don’t write to each other, preferring to meet again when the war is done and sort their lives out then. Before the war ends, Darnley dies in action in September at the age of 30.

Ulysses returns to London when the war ends. While he’s been away, his father’s business has been shattered, and his wife Peggy has had a child with Eddie. Eddie has been missing for years, and Peggy doesn’t know whether he’s dead or has moved on from her. Peggy’s daughter, Alys , reminds her too much of Eddie and of Peggy’s loss of independence, so she resents Alys.

Peggy and Ulysses have a tumultuous reunion, but eventually, they learn how to be friends again, and Ulysses becomes a father figure to Alys. They both find employment after the war; Ulysses starts working in Col’s bar with his friend Cress , as Peggy has become a typist. Col, the owner of the bar, has a daughter, Ginny, who has an intellectual disability; though Ginny is an adult, she acts and thinks like a child. Therefore, when Ginny gets pregnant, Col is determined to find the man who took advantage of her.

Small-town dramas like this inform Ulysses’s new civilian life. The years go by, and London starts to rebuild itself from the damage caused by the war. Ulysses discovers that Arturo, an Italian soldier whose life he saved during the war, has died and left everything in his will—his property in Florence and his money—to Ulysses. Ulysses decides to move to Italy. Peggy refuses to go with him but sends Alys with him so Alys can have a better, more loving life. Cress also decides to move to Italy with Ulysses.

Cress, Ulysses, and Alys move to Florence. On the way to Florence, Cress reveals that he snuck Claude the parrot out of Col’s bar and into Europe to join them on their move. They are astounded by the wealth Arturo left for them; the house is so big that they turn the first-floor apartment into a pensione for tourists. A notary named Massimo helps them set up in their new life, and the group begins to adapt to their neighborhood’s culture and the Italian language. At Christmas, friends from home, including Peggy and her boyfriend Ted, come to visit. Peggy’s personality has diminished within her relationship with Ted—he is very controlling, and she holds a lot of shame from her past. Claude the parrot warns Peggy not to marry Ted, but she does anyway.

In their first few months in Italy, Cress starts to come out of his shell more. He starts reading literature and dating an Italian woman in the neighborhood, and Alys starts school and makes new friends. Meanwhile, Ulysses starts making globes, wondering if he can restart his father’s former craft. Ulysses often thinks of Evelyn and wonders where and how she is, and whether she is still alive.

Evelyn is indeed alive. After the war, she moved back to England to become an art history teacher, and she is much beloved by her students. She and her girlfriend, a famous artist named Dotty, visit Florence in 1955, but she narrowly misses seeing Ulysses. Evelyn meets Alys, and when Alys tells Ulysses about a woman named Evelyn, he rushes to the train station to find her, but he misses her train. Over the next few years, Evelyn often travels to Florence and frequents the same neighborhood where Ulysses lives. Each time, they miss running into one another.

At age 14, Alys discovers her sexuality. She likes girls but tries to keep her relationship with an American girl named Romy a secret. As Alys grows up, Ulysses can sense the distance between them and wishes they could be closer. Alys likes music and art, and she is at the beginning stages of finding herself. She tells Ulysses about being in love with a girl, which he readily accepts. He has Massimo help talk to Alys about her sexuality being normal and beautiful. When Alys turns 17, she moves to London to work in Col’s bar and go to art school. While at art school, Alys attends one of Evelyn Skinner’s art history lectures.

Peggy’s relationship with Ted is complicated by Peggy’s loss of autonomy. The years go on, and Ulysses remains alone, now longing for Giulia, the married manager of his favorite café. Cress is in a long-term relationship with an Italian woman named Paola, and when she dies suddenly, Cress is devastated. Cress turns to nature for comfort. Friends Pete, Col, and Peggy pay a surprise visit to be with Cress to help him through the tough time he is having. When Ulysses learns this, he wonders how Peggy was able to travel without her possessive husband. Meanwhile, Alys, now 21, has moved back to Florence.

In 1966, the river Arno floods, and Florence is devastated as a result. People die, thousands are displaced from their homes, and priceless artworks are destroyed. The flood and its aftermath remind Italians of the war. Many young people flock to the city to help with reconstruction; their generosity and commitment to their culture gives them the nickname “Mud Angels.” Evelyn hears the news in England and rushes to Italy when she sees a newspaper photograph of Ulysses in the wreckage. When she arrives, they are finally reunited after 22 years. The flooding of the Arno is a historically accurate and significant moment in Italian history that sparks cultural and institutional change. Evelyn moves permanently into Ulysses’s pensione in Florence. When Peggy is in a disastrous car accident, Col moves her from London to Florence, where she stays for years and rekindles a relationship with Alys. Cress and the parrot Claude die together, and the pensione family leaves his ashes in the countryside so he can grow into a tree.

The 1970s see a new Italy, where frequent political protests challenge Italy’s unity. Massimo’s mother dies, and he then also moves into the pensione . Major changes take place for the characters as well. Alys and Romy reunite and fall in love again. Peggy divorces Ted and starts singing with Pete. In a club, she meets an American named Glen, who tells her that Eddie died six months after their time in London; Eddie was in love with Peggy and had every intention of marrying her. Peggy and Glen fall in love. Evelyn turns 99 years old and is celebrated by all her loved ones in Florence.

The novel flashes back to just before Evelyn’s 21st birthday when she moves to Florence. There, she meets the poet Constance Everly, who takes Evelyn under her wing and teaches her about Italian art and literature. Evelyn immediately falls in love with Italy and is moved to her core by the beauty of the country and its art. She then falls in love with Livia, who is a maid in the boardinghouse where Evelyn is staying. Evelyn meets the soon-to-be famous novelist E. M. Forster touring Italy with his mother. Evelyn tells him about her room with a view, and later, E. M. Forster will write an iconic novel about an Englishwoman in Italy titled A Room with a View . Livia and Evelyn end their passionate love affair when Evelyn leaves for Rome to be with her aunt. Eventually, communications with Livia cease and when Evelyn returns to Florence, Livia is nowhere to be found. Evelyn keeps the violet Livia gave her for the rest of her life, and she learns to move through the pain of losing this first love by cherishing her memory.

In the final moments of Still Life , the narrative returns to Evelyn and Ulysses together again in Florence. They visit the grave of Captain Darnley, and both choose to remember their lost loved ones as young, happy, and full of life.

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Book review: Still Life by Sarah Winman

October 16, 2021
Fleur Morrison
Book Reviews
11 Comments

I started Sarah Winman’s Still Life with extremely high expectations after hearing from friends and social media that it was a must-read.

I had also heard that it was set in Italy and having a deep love of the country, having lived for a short time in Italy and travelled there quite a few times, I thought that I would love it.

However, I didn’t, exactly.

Still Life opens in Italy during World War II as two soldiers meet an older woman who is trying to save the art that had been hidden from Nazi forces.

The three share a memorable night of wine and art before going their separate ways.

It then follows the story of Ulysses Temper, the soldier who returns to the UK and a colourful cast of characters who he calls his friends, and ex-wife.

Some of the characters move to Florence after Temper finds he has been left an apartment in the will of a man whose life he had saved while he was a soldier.

From there, the book is a love story to Florence and its art.

While I’m all for both Italy and art, I found the book to be a bit too sentimental. Ulysses was perfect in his kindness, his ex-wife was perfect in her beauty, the older woman was perfect in her glamour and their friend Cress was perfect in his wisdom.

It was all a bit … perfect.

I’ve got something against characters that are one-dimensionally good. Perhaps I am cynical but I believe there is good and bad in everyone and I prefer to see that reflected in the books I read.

Similarly, while Florence is extraordinarily beautiful, it is not without its political and social problems, none which reared their heads in Still Life.

I also felt the book was a little bit slow in parts, which is nice if you’re looking for a relaxing read that mainly focused on beauty and goodness, but for me it was a bit too ponderous. It might be a book for many, but it wasn’t really for me.

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Sounds like a book I would like to read. Don’t want things to develop too fast.

I agree, I found the characters stereotypes and the novel too long.

Still Life was pretentious twaddle. I don’t understand all the positive reviews. It is cliche ridden and predictable and the characters are all unbelievable. The structure is rambling and repetitive and I ended up skimming and then abandoning it. Life is too short to read third rate novels.

I totally agree. I’m halfway through and will finish it, but it’s very poor. There is little character development which means relationships are not believable. This is not an important book.

I couldn’t agree more. Ploughed through this book and finished it mainly because it was our book club choice and thought it was …boring, cringy and way tooo long. The characters as you said were too good to be true, there was no conflict and the the hint was in the title…Still Life.

Ha ha, definitely Still Life! I’m glad I wasn’t the only one to feel this way.

Absolutely agree. I am an avid reader but I found this book boring and an excuse for the author to ‘show off’ her knowledge of art, poetry and Florence. I couldn’t connect with any of the characters. The last section on Evelyn was the final straw and I skimmed the rest of the book to the end. Very disappointing.

Thank goodness! I thought it was just me. How convenient that the characters all held ‘modern’ sensibilities that placed them all on what is now considered to be the right side of history. How convenient that Ulysses loved Alys as if she were his own, how convenient that Cressy won big and so on. I bought this novel because it was voted the best novel of 2021 by Dymocks (Australia’s biggest book-seller), but all I can say is that it was formulaic, written to appeal to book club readers and deliberately and shamelessly trading on the cultural heritage of Italy and the beauty of Florence. The descriptions of 1950s Brits cooking traditional Italian fare with all the authenticity of Nonnas was nauseating and frankly, unbelievable. There was also a disrespect towards Catholic Italy that was disappointing and unnecessary, and a suggestion – perhaps I’m wrong – that communism was a viable alternative. Overall, this was a disappointing read.

Concur that this was a self-congratulatory, pseudo-intellectual book filled with trite observations and sentiments. How clever is Alys to recognise the genius of Fellini from the get-go. How nice that in spite of the era, every one is tolerant of everyone else in spite of their sexual preferences (even in Evelyn’s generation, both her father and aunt are completely understanding! Ain’t that swell!). How interesting that it was actually Cress the uneducated polymath who coined the term petrichor in 1952, though first report of it in published literature was not till 1964. So much for academic rigour. Truly nauseating and poorly written novel.

Did not reach beyond page28. A kind of “Eastenders” TV drama cliche ridden prose.

I agree with the foregoing comments. This was pretentious rubbish and devoid of any character development. It was clever, though, of Sarah Winman to name her principal character Ulysses for he was, like Odysseus, “a man of many devices”. Despite that, life is too short to read a novel like Still Life when you can read Henry James.

Roger Turner

NB I had already posted but then noticed an egregious typo so please disregard my first transmission.

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Still Life: A GMA Book Club Pick (A Novel)

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Still Life: A GMA Book Club Pick (A Novel) Hardcover – November 2, 2021

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Print length 464 pages
Language English
Publisher G.P. Putnam's Sons
Publication date November 2, 2021
Dimensions 6.25 x 1 x 9.25 inches
ISBN-10 0593330757
ISBN-13 978-0593330753
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The Love of My Life: A GMA Book Club Pick (A Novel)

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Still Life by Sarah Winman. A captivating, lively new novel of people brought together...

Editorial Reviews

Man as the Measure of All Things 1944 Somewhere in the Tuscan hills, two English spinsters, Evelyn Skinner and a Margaret someone, were eating a late lunch on the terrace of a modest albergo . It was the second of August. A beautiful summer's day, if only you could forget there was a war on. One sat in shade, the other in light, due to the angle of the sun and the vine-strewn trellis overhead. They were served a reduced menu but celebrated the Allied advance with large glasses of Chianti. Overhead, a low-flying bomber cast them momentarily in shadow. They picked up their binoculars and studied the markings. Ours, they said, and waved. This rabbit's delicious, said Evelyn, and she caught the eye of the proprietor, who was smoking by the doorway. She said, Coniglio buonissimo, signore! The signore put his cigarette in his mouth and raised his arm-part salute, part wave, one couldn't be sure. Do you think he's a Fascist? said Margaret quietly. No, I don't think so, said Evelyn. Although Italians are quite indecisive politically. Always have been. I heard they're shooting them now, the Fascists. Everyone's shooting everyone, said Evelyn. A shell screamed to their right and exploded on a distant hill, uprooting a cluster of small cypress trees. One of theirs, said Margaret, and she held on to the table to protect her camera and wineglass from the shock waves. I heard they found the Botticelli, said Evelyn. Which one? said Margaret. Primavera . Oh, thank God, said Margaret. And Giotto's Madonna from the Uffizi. Rubens's Nymphs and Satyrs and one more-Evelyn thought hard-ah, yes, she said. Supper at Emmaus. The Pontormo! Any news about his Deposition? No, not yet, said Evelyn, pulling a small bone from her mouth. In the distance, the sky suddenly flared with artillery fire. Evelyn looked up and said, I never thought I'd see this again at my age. Aren't we the same age? No. Older. You are? Yes. Eight years. Approaching sixty-four. Are you really ? Yes, she said, and poured out more wine. I pity the swallows, though, she added. They're swifts, said Margaret. Are you sure? Yes, said Margaret. The squealers are swifts, and she sat back and made an awful sound that was nothing like a swift. Swift , said Margaret, emphasizing her point. The swallow is, of course, the Florentine bird, she said. It's a Passeriform, a perching bird, but the swift is not. Because of its legs. Weak feet, long wingspan. It belongs to the order of Apodiformes. Apodiformes meaning "footless" in Greek. The house martin, however, is a Passeriform. Dear God, thought Evelyn. Will this not end? Swallows, continued Margaret, have a forked tail and a red head. And about an eight-year life expectancy. That's depressing. Not even double digits. Do you think swallow years are like dog years? said Evelyn. No, I don't think so. Never heard as much. Swifts are dark brown but appear blackish in flight. There they are again! screamed Margaret. Over there! Where? There! You have to keep up, they're very nippy. They do everything on the wing! Suddenly, out from the clouds, two falcons swooped in and ripped a swift violently in half. Margaret gasped. Did everything on the wing, said Evelyn as she watched the falcons disappear behind the trees. This is a lovely drop of Classico, she said. Have I said that already? You have actually, said Margaret tersely. Oh. Well, I'm saying it again. A year of occupation has not diminished the quality. And she caught the proprietor's eye and pointed to her glass. Buonissimo, signore! The signore took the cigarette out of his mouth, smiled and again raised his arm. Evelyn sat back and placed her napkin on the table. The two women had known one another for seven years. They'd been lovers briefly in the beginning, after which desire had given way to a shared interest in the Tuscan proto-Renaissance-a satisfactory turn of events for Evelyn, less so for Margaret someone. She'd thrown herself into ornithology. Luckily, for Evelyn, the advent of war prevented further pursuit, until Rome that is. Two weeks after the Allies had entered the city, she'd opened the front door of her aunt's villa on Via Magento only to be confronted by the unexpected. Surprise! said Margaret. You can't get away from me that easily! Surprise wasn't the word that had come to Evelyn's mind. Evelyn stood up and stretched her legs. Been sitting too long, she said, brushing crumbs off her linen slacks. She was a striking presence at full height, with intelligent eyes, as quick to the conundrum as they were to the joke. Ten years before, she had committed her graying thatch to blond and had never looked back. She walked over to the signore and in perfect Italian asked for a cigarette. She placed it between her lips and steadied his hand as she leaned toward the flame. Grazie , she whispered, and he pressed the packet firmly into her palm and motioned for her to take it. She thanked him again and moved back to the table. Stop, said Margaret. What? The light on your face. How green your eyes are! Turn a little to me. Stay like that. Margaret, for God's sake. Do it. Don't move. And Margaret picked up her camera and fiddled with the aperture setting. Evelyn drew on the cigarette theatrically (click) and blew smoke into the late-afternoon sky (click), noticing the shift of color, the lowering of the sun, a lone swift nervously circling. She moved a curl of hair away from her frown (click). What's eating you, dear chum? Mosquitoes, probably. I hear a touch of Maud Lin, said Margaret. Thoughts? What is old, d'you think? Cabin fever talking, said Margaret. We can't advance, we can only retreat. That's old, said Evelyn. And German mines, silly! I just want to get into Florence. Do something. Be useful. The proprietor came over and cleared their plates from the table. He asked them in Italian if they would like a coffee and grappa and they said, How lovely, and he told them not to go wandering again, and he told them his wife would go up to their room later and close the shutters. Oh, and would they like some figs? Oh sì, sì. Grazie. Evelyn watched him depart. Margaret said, I've been meaning to ask you. Robin Metcalfe told me you met Forster. Who? Him with a View. Evelyn smiled. Oh, very good. The way Robin Metcalfe tells it, you and Forster were best friends. How ridiculous! I met him across a dining table, if you must know, over dinners of boiled beef, at the ghastly Pensione Simi . We were an impoverished little ship on the banks of the Arno, desperately seeking the real Italy. And yet at the helm was a cockney landlady, bless her soul. Cockney? Yes. Why a cockney? I don't know. I mean, why in Florence? I never asked. Now you would, said Margaret. Now I certainly would, said Evelyn, and she took a cigarette and placed it between her lips. Probably came over as a nanny, said Margaret. Yes. Probably, said Evelyn, opening the matchbox. Or a governess. That'll be it, said Margaret. Evelyn struck a match and inhaled. Did you know he was writing a book? asked Margaret. Good Lord no. He was a recent scholar, if I remember rightly. Covered in the afterbirth of graduation-shy, awkward, you know the type. Entering the world with no experience at all. Weren't we all like that? Yes, I suppose we were, said Evelyn, and she picked up a fig and pressed her thumbs against the soft, yielding skin. I suppose we were, she repeated quietly. She tore the fruit in half and glanced down at the erotic sight of its vivid flesh. She blushed and would blame it on the shift to evening light, on the effect of the wine and the grappa and the cigarettes, but in her heart, in the unseen, most guarded part of her, a memory undid her, slowly-very slowly-like a zip. Strangely charismatic, though, she said, surfacing into the present. Forster was? said Margaret. When he was alone, yes. But his mother's presence suffocated him. Every reprimand was pressure applied to the pillow. Odd relationship. That's what I remember most. Her with a parasol and smelling salts, and him with a well-thumbed Baedeker and an ill-fitting suit. Margaret reached for Evelyn's cigarette. I remember he'd appear in quiet moments. You wouldn't hear him, just see him. Tall and lanky in the corner. Or in the drawing room with a notebook. Scribbling away. Simply observing. Isn't that how it starts? said Margaret, handing back the cigarette. What? A book.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ G.P. Putnam's Sons; First Edition (November 2, 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 464 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0593330757
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593330753
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.5 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 1 x 9.25 inches
#496 in 20th Century Historical Fiction (Books)
#840 in Family Life Fiction (Books)
#2,406 in Literary Fiction (Books)

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Sarah winman.

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The best books of 2021, chosen by our guest authors

From piercing studies of colonialism to powerful domestic sagas, our panel of writers, all of whom had books published this year, share their favourite titles of 2021

Kazuo Ishiguro

Author of Klara and the Sun (Faber)

The beautiful, horrible world of Mariana Enriquez, as glimpsed in The Dangers of Smoking in Bed (Granta), with its disturbed adolescents, ghosts, decaying ghouls, the sad and angry homeless of modern Argentina, is the most exciting discovery I’ve made in fiction for some time. Horrifying in another way, Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott’s Failures of State (Mudlark) is a brilliantly presented indictment of the UK’s fumbling attempt to meet the Covid challenge. Read alongside Jeremy Farrar’s more personal Spike: The Virus v The People (Profile) and Michael Lewis’s compelling The Premonition (Allen Lane), we see a disturbing common trait emerging in our country and others: the unwillingness to prioritise people’s lives over ideas and ingrained structures.

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I have been deeply impressed by recent books that invite us to reconsider aspects of British and global history, culture and identity beyond the often distorted, dishonest and pumped-up myth-making that has long prevailed. History is an interpretation of the past and these three books, each one powerfully persuasive and offering new ways of seeing, are in conversation with each other. Empireland : How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain (Penguin) by Sathnam Sanghera, The New Age of Empire : How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World (Allen Lane) by Kehinde Andrews and Green Unpleasant Land : Creative Responses to Rural England’s Colonial Connection s (Peepal Tree Press) by Corinne Fowler.

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Colm Tóibín

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I enjoyed Hugo Hamilton’s The Pages (Fourth Estate), narrated with verve and ingenuity by an actual book, a novel by Joseph Roth, which got saved from the Nazi bonfire and then taken on a picaresque journey across the Atlantic and back to Germany. I also enjoyed the social historian Patrick Joyce’s Going to My Father’s House (Verso), a haunting meditation on Ireland and England, war and migration, Derry and Manchester. I admired the originality of his observations and his tone of melancholy, calm wisdom. I love John McAuliffe’s Selected Poems (Gallery) for the way that ordinary things are rendered and rhythm handled so deftly and artfully.

Rachel Kushner

Author of The Hard Crowd: Essays 2000–2020 (Jonathan Cape)

My generation is very much marked by Dennis Cooper’s George Miles cycle: in the 1990s, everyone read these books; I was awed by them. For many years, Dennis took a break from novels to focus on theatre and film. He’s back with I Wished (Soho Press), which is classic Dennis Cooper: intricate, funny, destabilising and totally unforeseen. Wolfgang Hilbig is apparently one of the most acclaimed German writers, but was new to me. I’ll confess I fell for the blurb on the back of The Interim (Two Lines Press): the great László Krasznahorkai calls him “an artist of immense stature”. As soon as I started reading, I had to agree. This novel, translated by Isabel Fargo Cole, is comic and terrifying and profound.

Elif Shafak

Author of The Island of Missing Trees (Viking)

This year, reading Anita Sethi’s I Belong Here (Bloomsbury) was an unforgettable journey. Sethi wrote this book after being the victim of a horrible racist attack on a train from Liverpool to Newcastle. The genius of the author is how she takes the narrative of hatred and discrimination hurled at her and turns it upside down by “going back to where she is from” – the landscapes of the north. Through long walks in nature as she finds a true sense of belonging, connectivity, renewal and hope, so do we, her readers. I found it not only deeply moving but also quietly transformative. Another read that stayed with me this year has been Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s fabulous Thin Places (Canongate). Born in Derry, at the height of the Troubles, the author’s voice is piercingly honest, movingly heartfelt. There is so much soul and knowledge and compassion, it gave me shivers.

Author of Burntcoat (Faber)

Sea State (Fourth Estate) by Tabitha Lasley completely took me by surprise. Part memoir, part investigation into oil-rig culture, part critique of gender and class dynamics, it’s incredibly compelling, often dark as the drilled-for product. Lasley infiltrates this masculine offshore industry, with its dangers, profit and comradeship. She also explores female loneliness and desire, accommodation of a male-designed world and the spaces where women hold power. Reissued this year with impassioned praise from fellow authors such as Marlon James, Patricia Lockwood and Max Porter, Mrs Caliban (Faber) by Rachel Ingalls is a work of true verve and imagination. Along with her suburban housewife and lab-tested reptilian lover, Ingalls deftly, wittily and rather incredibly liberates readers from the awfulness of convention to a state where weirdness and otherness are beautiful and right.

Author of Sorrow and Bliss (Weidenfeld and Nicolson)

After the joy of discovering that one of your favourite authors has a new book out can follow a peculiar kind of anxiety, because what if you don’t like it as much as the others? I needn’t have worried with Rachel Cusk’s Second Place (Faber). It is stunning, in all senses. Assembly (Hamish Hamilton) by Natasha Brown left me winded for how clever and sad and beautiful and spare it was. Truly the perfect novel. And I adored Ann Patchett’s new essay collection, These Precious Days (Bloomsbury), which I read in November and will end the year by listening to her read, as audio. Because it’s Ann Patchett, one time through isn’t enough.

Caleb Azumah Nelson

Author of Open Water (Viking)

This year, I loved Transcendent Kingdom (Viking) by Yaa Gyasi, the story of a family of four who travel from Ghana to Alabama to make a new life for themselves. Through the course of the novel, the family’s history begins to unfold, illuminating stories that have gone unspoken for generations. It’s a brilliant novel, with not a word out of place. I also really enjoyed Vanessa Onwuemezi’s Dark Neighbourhood (Fitzcarraldo), a collection of short stories from an unforgettable, searing voice. They occupy a hallucinatory landscape, often veering into the surreal, and each pulses with an electric energy.

Lauren Groff

Author of Matrix (Heinemann)

I have been in headlong love with Patricia Lockwood’s hilarious and subversive mind since her memoir Priestdaddy , but her first novel, No One Is Talking About This (Bloomsbury) , sent me reeling. Everything about this book, from its structure to its prose to the way it hits a reader unawares in the second half, is testament to Lockwood’s wicked genius. Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch (Fourth Estate) by Rivka Galchen flew a bit under the radar, but it is a wise meditation on the kind of hysterical scapegoating we see so often in the age of the internet, though based on a historical fact: that the mother of astronomer Johannes Kepler was once accused of witchcraft. I loved this book intensely when I read it this summer and have thought of it nearly every day through this strange autumn. I’ve been thinking deeply about anagogical literature recently and very few living writers write so achingly toward God as Kaveh Akbar. Real faith, Akbar writes in Pilgrim Bell (Chatto & Windus), “passes first through the body/ like an arrow”; each of the poems in this collection finds its target.

Chibundu Onuzo

Author of Sankofa (Virago)

My favourite nonfiction book published in 2021 was Otegha Uwagba’s We Need to Talk About Money (Fourth Estate). It’s a memoir that shows how money has affected every stage of Uwagba’s life, from growing up on a council estate, to winning a scholarship to a private school, to negotiating her salary when she entered the workforce. Uwagba is particularly nuanced about class and race. My favourite novel published in 2021 was Our Lady of the Nile (Daunt) by Scholastique Mukasonga. It’s set in the 1980s, in a Rwandan girls boarding school. It follows all the girlish intrigues, of who is the most popular, who is the prettiest, but this is no Malory Towers . Looming in the background is the coming genocide. Both playful and sinister, this is an excellent read.

Olivia Laing

Author of Everybody: A Book About Freedom (Picador)

Anyone with a mother ought to read My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley (Granta), a novelist of uncompromising brilliance. It mines the same narrow, dangerous territory as Beryl Bainbridge and Ivy Compton-Burnett: the dysfunctional family unit. Riley homes in on the failing relationship between a mother and daughter, anatomised by way of astonishingly precise dialogue, alongside angular, razor-sharp sentences that delineate an entire emotional landscape. Ouch and wow. There’s a similar marvel of ventriloquism in Adam Mars-Jones’s Batlava Lake (Fitzcarraldo), a story about war and soldiers delivered by the hopeless, weirdly endearing Barry, which builds to a blindsiding final paragraph.

Sunjeev Sahota

Author of China Room (Harvill Secker)

Barbara Ehrenreich is an incisive diagnostician of societies and in Had I Known: Collected Essays (Granta) she is clear-eyed on the ways in which the American working class has been politically abandoned and culturally demonised. Much of the analysis applies to our own country. On the novel front, I could not recommend more strongly Gwendoline Riley’s My Phantoms (Granta): flinty, bracing, exquisite.

Anthony Doerr

Author of Cloud Cuckoo Land (Fourth Estate)

In The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (Allen Lane), David Graeber and David Wengrow offer an engrossing series of insights into how “the conventional narrative of human history is not only wrong, but quite needlessly dull”. They re-inject humanity into our distant forebears, suggesting that our prevailing story about human history – that not much innovation occurred in human societies until the invention of agriculture – is utterly wrong. I could have lived in the first hundred pages of Piranesi (Bloomsbury) by Susanna Clarke for ever. It’s a dream of a novel. Zorrie (Riverrun; published early next year) by Laird Hunt is a tender, glowing novel that is just as beautiful as Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead or Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams .

Ferdinand Mount

Author of Kiss Myself Goodbye: The Many Lives of Aunt Munca (Bloomsbury)

These days, I seem to read mostly female novelists from the colder parts of North America. You can’t get much farther north than the Ontario of Mary Lawson’s icy, compelling stories of calamity and redemption. A Town Called Solace (Chatto) keeps you breathless with anxiety, then relief and finally even joy. I felt the same total engagement with Gill Hornby’s Miss Austen (Arrow). She reconstructs in beautifully simple detail the story of Jane Austen’s sister, Cassandra, and her struggle to protect Jane in life and death. It is also an unforgettable account of an unremembered life.

Kehinde Andrews

Author of The New Age of Empire (Allen Lane)

David Harewood’s documentary Psychosis and Me was an eye-opener for his honesty in reflecting on his experiences in the mental health system. His book Maybe I Don’t Belong Here (Bluebird) is one of the most powerful testimonies to the impact of racism I have ever read. In a similar vein, Guilaine Kinouani’s Living While Black (Ebury) highlighted the severe problem of racism in the psychological professions that has hallmarked so much of our experiences in the UK, an unfortunate experience we have in common with our American cousins. I had been looking forward to learning more about one of the most important US civil rights activists Fannie Lou Hamer and Keisha Blain’s Until I Am Free (Beacon) did not disappoint.

Author of The Book of Form and Emptiness (Canongate)

Double Blind (Harvill Secker) by Edward St Aubyn is about nature, science, rapacious capitalism, psychoanalysis and human folly, and it is both moving and so funny I had to stop every few pages to wipe tears from my eyes. Nobody’s Normal (WW Norton) by Roy Richard Grinker is a compassionate, well-researched chronicle of the historical stigmatisation of mental illness. Since “normal” is a social construct, why can’t we change it? I love how Katie Kitamura can channel a mind and in Intimacies (Vintage) it is the mind of an unnamed interpreter living in The Hague, interpreting for a former president on trial for war crimes.

Monique Roffey

Author of The Mermaid of Black Conch (Vintage)

Still Life (Fourth Estate) by Sarah Winman gets my vote, not just for its mastery and sweep (Tuscany, the East End of London, war and beyond war, old gay ladies, young men) and the overarching theme of the power of love, but for its talking parrot as character, Claude. Claude gets some of the best lines. Also, Fortune (Peepal Tree Press) , by Amanda Smyth, another historic novel, a clandestine love story set amid Trinidad’s early oil drilling years in the 1920s. I also loved English Pastoral : An Inheritanc e (Penguin) by James Rebanks, out in paperback this year. His family have farmed the same land for 600 years. We’ve lost so much, but Rebanks gives us solutions and myth-busts; a poignant and sad book we need in a time of climate emergency.

Elizabeth Day

Author of Magpie (Fourth Estate)

My two favourite novels of the year were Sorrow and Bliss (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) by Meg Mason, for being hilarious, moving and utterly humane, and Damon Galgut’s The Promise (Chatto). The label “masterpiece” is far too liberally applied these days, but I did think Galgut’s book was deserving of it. In nonfiction, I enjoyed We Need to Talk About Money (Fourth Estate) by Otegha Uwagba, which challenged me to rethink my relationship with my finances and did so in a witty, intelligent and surprisingly touching way.

Author of The Echo Chamber (Doubleday)

Kevin Power’s long-awaited second novel, White City (Scribner), was a triumph. There’s not enough humour in contemporary fiction but Power brought the laughs and the pathos to this account of a young Dubliner, reared with privilege, who gets involved in a dodgy land deal in the Balkans. In nonfiction, I was impressed by Helen Joyce’s Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality (Oneworld), a scholarly, compassionate and courageous examination of a subject that’s sparked an unhelpful civil war within the LGBTQ community. Unlike those of her online counterparts, Joyce’s arguments are well researched, soundly made and avoid the toxicity that mars so much conversation on this topic.

Courttia Newland

Author of A River Called Time (Canongate)

Keeping the House (And Other Stories) by Tice Cin is a truly beautiful debut. A mistress of deftly sketched characters that become whole humans in a few lines, Cin tells stories of working-class, inner-city life steeped in truth, emotion and vulnerability. She is one of a new generation of writers who see the splendour of these streets and articulate it with great majesty. Jo Hamya’s Three Rooms (Vintage) is written in a classical style that’s no less incisive for its formality. From the first paragraph, I was hooked. Tension drips through every scene and Hamya depicts London so well. There’s quiet, raw power in this book and its author.

Cathy Rentzenbrink

Author of Everyone Is Still Alive (Phoenix)

I like a novel to grab me and The Book of Form and Emptiness (Canongate) by Ruth Ozeki gave me very peculiar dreams for a long time, as though it did not want to release me to other things. I enjoyed the robust style of Empireland (Penguin) by Sathnam Sanghera, an illuminating examination of the “toxic cocktail of nostalgia and amnesia” that still hugely influences our life today. Erudite and reassuring , Four Thousand Weeks (Vintage) by Oliver Burkeman persuaded me to accept that my time on Earth is finite so I should therefore not fritter it away in overwork and overwhelm.

Author of Razorblade Tears (Headline)

Her Name Is Knight (Thomas & Mercer) by Yasmin Angoe is a dazzling, suspenseful tale of international intrigue and revenge with a protagonist who is as deadly as she is beautiful. A feared assassin, Nena Knight soon finds her latest mission to be her most dangerous as it puts her life and her heart at risk. Arsenic and Adobo by Mia Manansala is a quirky, cosy mystery full of humour and heart with a clever heroine who is as talented in the kitchen as she is at a murder scene. A fantastic debut. The Heathens (Little, Brown) by Ace Atkins is pure, uncut, US southern noir with a modern social media twist. Few writers know the tortured soul of the south better than Atkins and he is at the top of his game here.

Fintan O’Toole

Author of We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Ireland Since 1958 (Head of Zeus)

Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You (Faber) has really stayed with me. For all its wit and style, it has a deep seriousness about the world. Rooney has an old-fashioned belief that the novel can be a place in which the question of how we should live is continually at play. Damon Galgut’s The Promise (Chatto) sustains the same moral purpose while being funny, angry and absurd all at once. Paul Muldoon had a remarkable year. His conversations with Paul McCartney for The Lyrics (Allen Lane) spark endlessly fascinating reflections on the relationship between life and creativity. And his new collection, Howdie-Skelp (Faber), is dazzling, moving, profound and playful.

Author of Bessie Smith (Faber)

I loved Neil Bartlett’s Address Book (Inkandescent). It took me back to all the addresses I’ve lived in - the lesbian squat in Vauxhall, John le Carré’s house in Hampstead! Brilliantly written, interweaving seven different characters across various times, Bartlett’s precise storytelling pulled me in. I’m glad we have him. He is a pioneering chronicler of queer lives. Ian Duhig’s New and Selected Poems (Picador) is a must have, must read gathering of the best of his work. Always fascinating, Duhig is poetry’s best chronicler of both ordinary lives, strange lives. His eclectic and effervescent work draws on folklore and myth to tell the stories we never get to hear. Duhig is interested in everything. He makes his reader sit up and take stock. I was inspired by the beauty and the power of the fabulous collective 4 Brown Girls Who Write – their poetry reminds me of the strength and exhilaration of a collective voice. Beautifully produced by Rough Trade Books, each of the four poets produces a standalone pamphlet that comes to form part of an incredible whole. The perfect stocking pressie. I was touched by Michelle Zauner’s cathartic memoir about losing her mother, Crying in H Mart (Picador). Zauner writes about food, music, grief and love candidly, bravely.

Chris Power

Author of A Lonely Man (Faber)

Two novels that stunned me this year involve characters overwhelmed by the force of another’s personality. The narrator of Gwendoline Riley’s My Phantoms (Granta) reckons with her parents, one dead, one ailing, who emerge as both spiteful and pitiable. Riley is an immensely talented writer whose sentences cut like knives and she doesn’t flinch when blade meets bone. Similarly dauntless, in Second Place (Faber), Rachel Cusk abandons the distinctive style of her Outline trilogy for a new voice. When M invites L, a painter she admires, to her remote coastal home, psychic combat ensues. It’s a profound book and a funny one, which hasn’t been mentioned enough.

Megan Nolan

Author of Acts of Desperation (Jonathan Cape)

After the past few years, when even the most ignorant among us took to slinging around virology terms as though we knew what we were talking about, I’ve found myself drawn to accounts and oral histories of the Aids crisis. Let the Record Show (Farrar) by Sarah Schulman is profoundly moving, as most are, but also does the important work of reasserting the place of women and people of colour in the history of Act Up. Paul (Granta) by Daisy Lafarge is a mesmerising novel about a young woman’s trip to France and ensuing entanglement with a man whose grotesque secrets begin to surface. It moves at a pace it feels Lafarge invented herself. It’s enviably, coolly intelligent without ever becoming ironic or snide and just one more exposition of Lafarge’s many gifts following on from her poetry collection Life Without Air .

Joshua Ferris

Author of A Calling for Charlie Barnes (Viking)

Three great pleasures for me this year came from reliable sources. Jo Ann Beard’s essays in Festival Days (Little, Brown) are some of her finest. Dana Spiotta’s novel Wayward (Virago) is razor-sharp on any number of things, above all the insoluble ravages of time. Then there were three writers new to me whose books were both reinvigorating and enlightening: Angélique Lalonde’s Glorious Frazzled Beings (Astoria), Miriam Toews’s Fight Night (Bloomsbury) and Casey Plett’s A Dream of a Woman (Arsenal Pulp Press).

Lisa Taddeo

Author of Animal (Bloomsbury)

Magpie (Fourth Estate) by Elizabeth Day is that rare novel that moves and taunts like a thriller, but also envelops and comforts like Middlemarch . I didn’t want it to end, I wanted to read it in fancy bars for ever. As for The Right to Sex (Bloomsbury) by Amia Srinivasan , I cannot say enough about this book. How crucial. How brilliant. How absolutely gratifying to see a mind at work like Srinivisan’s, handling the profane and the erudite with equal clear, unflinching diamond prose.

Sathnam Sanghera

Author of Empireland (Viking)

My novel of the year would be A Calling for Charlie Barnes (Viking) by Joshua Ferris, a hilarious skewering of the American Dream by the man who must be the funniest writer we have. I also really appreciated The Anarch y (Bloomsbury) by William Dalrymple, out in paperback this year, which does a great job explaining the East India Company, responsible, more than anything else, for Britain’s involvement in the subcontinent. And Imperial Nostalgia (Manchester University Press) by Peter Mitchell, which explains how the delusions of the Raj continue to shape our national psychology today.

Joan Bakewell

Author of The Tick of Two Clocks: A Tale of Moving On (Virago)

The sensitivity of Susie Boyt’s story of family love, Loved and Missed (Little, Brown), wrings the heart: it shows tenderness to each, makes you care for all… a gentle masterpiece. The Promise (Chatto) by Damon Galgut is a remarkable tale of four generations of one South African family and of the country itself. Like his earlier books, which I have also enjoyed, it reveals him as a master of human complexity. No wonder it won the Booker. Mothering Sunday (Scribner) by Graham Swift was not published this year, I know, but was picked up by me at the secondhand stall of Didcot Parkway station. It’s now released as a film. Reading it, I discovered a total gem: not a word out of place, not a false sentiment. Can the film be as good?

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Best books of 2021
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Still Life by Sarah Winman book review

There are some books that receive an awful lot of praise and hype when you post about them on social media, Lessons In Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus was one and Still Life by Sarah Winman is another. This always then buries a high expectation into you whilst you’re reading it and, unfortunately, you often find that the book can never reach the hype that social media has set for it. Either it’s not your thing or the mass of audience who came to tell you it’s great aren’t into the sort of books you like. Still Life isn’t one of those books. It’s brilliant.

Sarah Winman book review. www.lukeharkness.com

Please note that this article contains affiliate links. This means that if you choose to purchase any products via the links below, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. These affiliate links do not affect my final opinion of the product.

Still Life focuses on the stories of a few small characters in whose lives nothing ever truly outstanding ever happens but Winman makes you care so much. The story mainly follows our protagonist Ulysses after he returns from Italy during the war to his friends in London who work at a pub that has a parrot. It’s a great little concept that sometimes has you defying your concept of reality but never feeling absurd doing so because you’re so overjoyed with the results.

Still Life plot – 4.25/5

There’s something to be said about a book that when you look back at it, you can explain almost every detail that happens and yet nothing about it would make someone go ‘ooh that sounds like a fascinating story’. The reason you’ll love the story in Still Life isn’t because it features massive blockbuster moments or because there are clever, sweeping moments but because it is wholeheartedly real and humble.

When I posted about Still Life on my Twitter, almost everybody mentioned that they didn’t get it at first as it wasn’t overly obvious as to what the point was. However, Winman’s phenomenal writing kept them intrigued. Whilst mentioning her writing, I must warn you that there are no speech marks in this book. At first, it was incredibly confusing as I wasn’t sure if I was reading it wrong or had a dodgy issue. However, after some research, I found out this was on purpose and it was Winman’s artistic style.

Now, at first, it is a bit jarring, however, as many people mentioned online, the way Winman writes is so clever, natural and progressive that you never really notice it. You quickly grasp when people are speaking and who is speaking and you quickly fall into the gorgeous characters she has created and so completely forgo all of your rules on how grammar should work.

Still Life characters – 4.75/5

Sometimes a book will come along that has you fall in love with the characters and their interactions and the journies they go on. Still Life is one of those books. If you can look past the lack of speech marks and the fact you feel a little lost when you first start reading then you’ll be rewarded with some of the most incredibly written characters you’ll ever have the joy of reading.

Almost every character in this book is deep, has a sense of humour or is just generally likeable. Some of them are all three. As well as these admirable traits, they all interact with each other in such a beautiful way giving off a big family feeling that will make you route for every single one of them to succeed throughout.

There’s an ongoing “love story” that teases us with promise and consistency but has us realise that no adult relationships are easy, they’re not that mysterious but they’re often hard work and require both sides to speak and know what’s going on. I’ve never read a love story where it didn’t work out how I thought it would and I still come away absolutely loving it.

I keep mentioning other people’s views on the books but again I’ll say that many people say that the characters “stayed with them long after the book was finished” which is a true testament to the grip this group of people will have on you.

Still Life final rating – 4.5/5

Still Life is one of the best books I’ve read all year. I’ve given it this rating because it is one of the most beautifully written, down-to-earth, encapsulating books I’ve read in a long time. The characters will keep you wholly invested and their interactions and relationships will make you yearn for more. You’re not going to be blown away by the plot and I’ve heard criticisms from people that not a lot actually happens drama-wise – but when a book has a big thick tick through so many other boxes, you can’t help but appreciate it for the art-like state it reaches.

Pick up a copy of Still Life from Amazon.

If you liked the sound of Still Life , you might like my reviews of the following books:

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah
The Giver of Stars by JoJo Moyes

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Still Life by Sarah Winman book review

Still Life plot – 4.25/5