Still Life a Beautiful Novel

 

STILL LIFE (2021)

By Sarah Widman

G. P. Putnam's Sons, 450 pages.

★★★★★

 

 

 

The Odyssey tells of the struggles of Ulysses to return home after the Trojan War. Sarah Widman puts a different spin on this in her moving, brilliant Still Life. Pay attention; hers is a novel in which very little is wasted. Observe also that “home” is a moving target.

 

We meet protagonist Ulysses (“Uly”) Temper in Florence in 1944 during the waning but still dangerous days of Italian liberation during World War II. Uly and his commander Captain Darnley, whom Uly admires above all other men, meet Evelyn Skinner, an art historian with the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program charged with recovering treasures looted by the Nazis. She is one of numerous memorable characters Uly encounters, including cafe owner Michele, an elderly Contessa, and Arturo Bernadini, a globe maker and pensione (guest house) owner, whom he saves from a suicide attempt.

 

The war's end finds Uly back home in London, where he reunites with other unorthodox types, including his decades-older friend Alfred Creswell (“Cressy”); pianist/actor Pete Fine; Des, a surface-deep Cockney hooligan; Col, the tough-talking owner of the Stoat and Parrot pub; Claude, the pub's wise and wise-cracking namesake parrot; Peggy Temper, a superb singer and Uly's ex-wife; and Peg's young daughter Alys (“the Kid”), who isn't Uly's offspring. Uly and Cressy begin taking the Kid to see Fellini and other art films when she's just eight. Uly and Peg remain nuts about each other and often go at it like rabbits, but Peg has trouble being a one-man woman.

 

Uly is adrift, but his life takes a turn in 1953, when Arturo dies and wills his home and pensione to Uly. Can a guy from London's East End with almost no Italian make a new life in Florence? What's he got to lose? With the help of Massimo, a sometime real estate agent with superb English skills, Uly becomes an innkeeper/globe maker. Soon, his small hotel and large house are the center of Uly's life and the repository for visiting London pals, especially Cressy who becomes a semi-permanent resident, and Alys, who Peg gave over to Uly's care since she's not cut out for parenthood either.

 

Still Life follows the lives, loves, triumphs, and tragedies of all these characters. Not surprisingly, as Alys grows up, she's bohemian and smart as a whip. Uly's pensione is the setting for the tears and joys of its principals, but it also parallels the evolution of Florence from its backwater postwar status to the artistic centerpiece with which we now associate it. Not all the city’s changes are positive, nor is the transition smooth. Winman overlays real-life events, chief among them the 1966 flood of the Arno that killed 101 Florentines, made 5,000 homeless, wrecked 6,000 shops, left the city without electricity, strained food and water supplies, damaged millions of artworks and books, and destroyed scores of masterpieces. Were it not for international relief efforts and the tireless efforts of hundreds of art-rescuing “mud angels,” the loss of life and cultural riches would have been even more devastating.

 

I mentioned that Winman doesn't put much filler in her book. One of the mud angels is volunteer Jem Gunnerslake, the connection that (eventually) brings Evelyn back into the novel. What a role she will play, even as she totters into her late 80s and 90s. As Winman drops in more world events, including the wave of U. S. assassinations in 1968, we realize that the title Still Life has several meanings, the usual one associated with art, a reminder that old people still breathe, and the search of each of the characters for tranquility, a “still” life.

 

I adored this book. The phrase “it will make you laugh; it will make you cry” applies like a solid gold frame to Still Life. It is ultimately about finding “home” and love in guises unbound by birth origins, geography, or traditional morality. It's so affecting that it's easy to overlook some of the book's shortcomings, such as openly gay and lesbian relationships at a time in which such things were generally closeted. Winman might also be prematurely modern in presenting an interracial affair between a Cockney and an Indian widow. Some might also view the novel’s final section as overly pat and forced, though one could also argue that it completes Uly's search for stillness. In a book this good, I cast my vote in favor of any and all liberties taken.

 

Rob Weir