Sarah Winman

Still Life

From acclaimed author of Tin Man, Sarah Winman, comes a captivating new novel of people brought together across four decades of love, war, art, flood, and the ghost of E. M. Forster. Tuscany, 1944: As Allied troops advance and bombs fall around deserted villages, a young English solder, Ulysses Temper, finds himself in the wine cellar of a Tuscan 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 Florence, her lost love, and a surprising friendship with a young E. M. Forster. 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. As he returns home to the East End of London, reimmersing himself in his crew at The Stoat and Parrot--a motley mix of pub crawlers and eccentrics--Ulysses carries his time in Italy with him. And when an unexpected inheritance brings him back to where it all began, Ulysses knows better than to tempt fate and returns to the Tuscan hills. With gorgeous prose and extraordinary tenderness, Still Life is a richly drawn tapestry of the individuals who come together to make a family, and a sweeping portrait of beauty and love.

Grace

One day the church will loose it’s hold on society, and what a society it will be

Space, time and motion. Hours, days, seasons. Our lives segmented into a series of mnoments. 

In time, Cress hoped to lose his fear of poetry, especially the stuff that didn't rhyme. Cress was a facts man, and facts were stone. Poetry, though, was sand.

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER AND BBC RADIO 4 BOOK AT BEDTIME PICK ‘Sheer joy' Graham Norton, author of Home Stretch ‘Utterly beautiful ... filled with hope’ Joanna Cannon, author of Three Things About Elsie ‘A bear-hug of a book’ Rachel Joyce, author of Miss Benson’s Beetle

Lucy Newlinds

Sarah

Rochelle Butcher

This historical fiction book takes place in both London and Florence and spans four decades from the end of WWII to 1979. It is full of well developed characters that you get to know intimately over the years. You get to witness their deep love and connection for one another and follow their hardships, joys ,and inner growth over the years. 

The writing is beautiful and introspective. The author does a great job of transporting you to Florence which makes it a great pandemic read. I enjoyed it immensely.

Lara Engle

This book is everything: poignant, sad, heartwarming, jolly, mischievous, sensuous, and more. It has a daydream-like quality that is gorgeous, but also somewhat unsettling. The choice to not use quotation marks on dialogue never stopped being distracting for me. I think the book would have had a vibrancy it missed if the dialogue had felt more immediate. Overall, it's just a stunning chronicle of a life well-lived with the family they chose.

Don't let the title mistake you: you will not read a book more bustling with life than this. All thanks to its colorful characters. I will miss them dearly. 

Frederik De Bosschere

Kristen Claiborn

This book was beyond my level of literary tolerance. I wasn’t, in ANY way, able to deal with the lack of conversational punctuation marks. I don’t find it “artistic,” I find it disheveled. It’s unorganized. It looks like she couldn’t decide where to put them, so she just didn’t. I also absolutely hated the jumping around of the story…if that’s what you’d like to call this. It felt like a jumble of loosely associated paragraphs more than a cohesive piece of fiction. I was really disappointed, especially because this was a GMA pick.

Jo Mas

fascinating cast of characters which somehow avoid being cliched, in an emotional plot full of love and hope

Ashling Brown

“Beautiful art opens our eyes to the beauty of the world, Ulysses. It repositions our sight and judgement. Captures forever that which is fleeting.”

Still, life was the sort of book that takes you to another place. Instead of following a character, you are a character, and slowly through the pages, their life becomes yours as well. 

I really enjoyed reading this book, I found the story to be interesting, and I love the overall thought of meeting someone that can change your life entirely. Throughout this book, every character's actions have consequences - each has a story of their own to tell, and it's beautiful how detailed each of these characters is. I love fleshed out characters, I feel as if a well-written character makes a book good, and Sarah Winman definitely delivered on that front!

There were times where I felt the story went a little flat - I'm not sure if this was because of the slight repetition that I got on a few things, but that would be the only negative thing that I have to say about this book. 

Overall this was a wonderful story on friendship and life and how the smallest thing can change our perspective on life.

agnese

this book was beautiful. the writing was spectacular and i loved the details of life in italy, though it still felt like it was written from the perspective of a foreigner - and this is not necessarily a bad thing. i enjoyed the discussion surrounding some of the queer characters, but i felt like it could've been explored a bit more for just how long this book is. oh yeah, it's so long and info-dumpy at times. despite loving the premise, i feel like this novel could have benefited from shedding at least 50-75 pages. other than that, it's very good and i love the waterstones edition!!!

Still Life

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