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