La Dolce Vita: 'Still Life' by Sarah Winman – Book Review

 

A 64-year-old art historian meets a young British soldier in Tuscany during World War II. According to the publisher’s blurb, this event changes the soldier’s life. However, it seems to me that his transformation is really down to an encounter with someone else in wartime Italy, which years later results in life-changing consequences. Winman’s novel is essentially a love letter to Florence, with an endearing cast of mostly British characters finding themselves there, literally and figuratively. Despite intertextual links with E M Forster’s A Room With A View, Still Life reads like a modern-day fairytale, with (for me, old cynic that I am) far too many happy coincidences and examples of unlikely social and emotional tolerance of various behaviours, especially for the time period. Are/were people really like this? Do such things really happen? Sadly, no. Winman presents vita umana not as it is, but as we would like it to be. That said, if your heart needs warming, Still Life is to be recommended. Full of optimism, captivating evocations of Italy, observations about art, and the better aspects of humanity, it is definitely a book to lift the spirits.

Still Life by Sarah Winman ISBN: 9780008283391