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A review by kastrel
Still Life by Sarah Winman
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.75
This book absolutely blew me away. The best thing I've read in months. It's this glorious sweeping found family narrative that spans decades, war and peace, London and Florence. It's about love, romantic and platonic and parental, straight and queer, and art, and what makes people human. Despite being historical fiction, the queer love is front and centre, and easy without seeming anachronistic. It's emotional but not saccharine (at least, I thought so), and you absolutely fall in love with the characters and want the best for them. There's just the tiniest hint of magical realism (a very intelligent talking parrot) that just heightens the experience.
The writing style is everything here - it's rich, elaborate, but not clunky or overwritten. There are beautiful poetic callbacks (the title is woven through the whole book in terms of art, and then is reimagined at the end in a way that took my breath away). It's packed with references to art and literature (particularly Forster). In style, it reminded me strongly of Kate Atkinson (who I love), a little of Jessie Burton's modern fiction, and there's a hint of The French Lieutenant's Woman. The third-person narrator has their own voice, and there's just enough playing with form and the use of fate or luck that it sometimes feels like it knows it's a book (is that post-modern) like the John Fowles. But not in a way that spoiled it for me. I personally don't know why the dialogue isn't in quotation marks like normal though - it didn't seem to add anything and was just occasionally confusing.
Audiobook notes: it's read by the author extremely well! She does voices without them getting in the way, and apart from disagreeing with me on the pronunciation of Baedeker, I liked it a lot. It's a book which works well to listen to.
The writing style is everything here - it's rich, elaborate, but not clunky or overwritten. There are beautiful poetic callbacks (the title is woven through the whole book in terms of art, and then is reimagined at the end in a way that took my breath away). It's packed with references to art and literature (particularly Forster). In style, it reminded me strongly of Kate Atkinson (who I love), a little of Jessie Burton's modern fiction, and there's a hint of The French Lieutenant's Woman. The third-person narrator has their own voice, and there's just enough playing with form and the use of fate or luck that it sometimes feels like it knows it's a book (is that post-modern) like the John Fowles. But not in a way that spoiled it for me. I personally don't know why the dialogue isn't in quotation marks like normal though - it didn't seem to add anything and was just occasionally confusing.
Audiobook notes: it's read by the author extremely well! She does voices without them getting in the way, and apart from disagreeing with me on the pronunciation of Baedeker, I liked it a lot. It's a book which works well to listen to.