entertainment
STI L L L I F E by Sarah Winman
WORDS Sara Putman, owner Bookish, visit bookishfs.com
A
A story within a story within a story,
decades that follow. They are bound
Winman gives us a work of historical
by art, yes, but they are also bound
fiction that is so character driven, you
by their own sense of optimism. It is
will think you’re sitting in a London
Ulysses’ idealism that colors Evelyn’s
pub with your newest friends. There
view of him and their profound
is no secret, we are reading about art
understanding of one another that
and culture, and in the shadow of the
fosters an immense love story that
poets, painters, and the novelist E.M.
binds them through war, natural
Forester, Winman offers up a delicacy
disasters, and lovers.
of love, lust, war, friendship, and family that spans decades.
If art is how we find ourselves, home is where we nurture ourselves. From the
Ulysses Temper is our heroic protagonist. Honest and
battlefields of Europe, Ulysses returns to London’s East End,
hardworking, we meet him while he is still a soldier in the
particularly to a shabby Georgian tavern called the Stoat and
war and find his loyalties pure and admirable. However,
Parrot, home to a preternaturally clever bird. “Ulysses pushed
the book begins and ends with Evelyn Skinner, the sixty-
open the door,” Winman writes, “and the fire to his right
four-year-old art historian who is tasked with identifying
gave off a ripe old smell, all sour and smarting bodies. The
masterpieces hidden in the Tuscan hills and to protect them
old ones were huddled around the hearth exactly as he’d left
from theft and destruction. This chance encounter between
them – same faces less teeth.” And here we meet our cast of
Evelyn and Ulysses sets the tone for the rest of the novel.
characters that readers will live with and love throughout the
When Ulysses questions her role in the war, Evelyn is more
novel. Each character is beautifully flawed, and their character
than ready for him. She quips, “Art versus humanity is not
arcs are drawn out in a way that makes them pertinent to the
the question. One does not exist without the other.”
narrative. Winman integrates historical threads throughout the decades to ground us to our place in history while showing us
Obviously, Skinner and Ulysses don’t think they will ever see
the magic that can happen when surrounded by people who
each other again, but their encounter is the impetus for the
love you. From London to Florence, home is where our family
rest of the novel. Even though we are in Italy, surrounded
is – whatever form that takes, and Winman’s portrait of such
by art, wine, and handsome British soldiers, the “love” story
a family offers comradery and light.
between the senior art historian and young British soldier is the driving force behind this rendezvous of a novel.
Still Life is a remedy for loneliness, a mirror reflecting art
Their encounter at the beginning of the book colors the
in our lives.
DOSOUTHMAGAZINE.COM
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