Why did I love this book?
I loved this book because although I write children’s books, this is the sort of adult novel which feeds my imagination.
It begins in Florence at the end of WW2, where we first meet the British soldier Ulysses Temper, his commanding officer Darnley, and Evelyn Skinner, an elderly art historian. We then follow Ulysses back to the East end of London at the end of the war, where he resumes his old life – but changed by the experiences of war, Italy, and art.
We get to know his wonderfully varied group of friends who are bound together, and sometimes tortured, by nothing short of love - and we care about the perils and pleasures fate unexpectedly throws at them. The writing is magnificent, tender, expressive, and moving but never sentimental.
I absolutely love this book and cannot praise it highly enough.
7 authors picked Still Life as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
A Good Morning America Book Club Pick
A Veranda Magazine Book Club Pick
A captivating, bighearted, richly tapestried story of people brought together by love, war, art, flood, and the ghost of E. M. Forster, by the celebrated author of Tin Man.
Tuscany, 1944: As Allied troops advance and bombs fall around deserted villages, a young English soldier, Ulysses Temper, finds himself in the wine cellar of a deserted 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…