Still Life: A GMA Book Club Pick
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Description
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 own youth. In each other, Ulysses and Evelyn find a kindred spirit amidst the rubble of war-torn Italy, and set off on a course of events that will shape Ulysses's life for the next four decades.
As Ulysses returns home to London, reimmersing himself in his crew at The Stoat and Parot--a motley mix of pub crawlers and eccentrics--he carries his time in Italy with him. And when an unexpected inheritance brings him back to where it all began, Ulysses knows better than to tempt fate, and returns to the Tuscan hills.
With beautiful prose, extraordinary tenderness, and bursts of humor and light, Still Life is a sweeping portrait of unforgettable individuals who come together to make a family, and a deeply drawn celebration of beauty and love in all its forms.
Book Information
Posts
Unfortunately, this is the first book that I started and deliberately didn't finish. I expected it to be a nice book based on the reviews that I read, by the description of it and its beautiful cover. However, I really didn't like it and stopped after reading roughly 25%. I wanted to see if it can catch me later, but it didn't happen. The story was not engaging to me at all. The feelings and the relationships of the characters didn't catch me, I had trouble to get emotionally engaged, I suspect because of the writing style of the author. It all felt rather flat to me. It also felt stretched without that something happens. It was also difficult to read without quotation marks for speech. I don't recommend this book.
Description
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 own youth. In each other, Ulysses and Evelyn find a kindred spirit amidst the rubble of war-torn Italy, and set off on a course of events that will shape Ulysses's life for the next four decades.
As Ulysses returns home to London, reimmersing himself in his crew at The Stoat and Parot--a motley mix of pub crawlers and eccentrics--he carries his time in Italy with him. And when an unexpected inheritance brings him back to where it all began, Ulysses knows better than to tempt fate, and returns to the Tuscan hills.
With beautiful prose, extraordinary tenderness, and bursts of humor and light, Still Life is a sweeping portrait of unforgettable individuals who come together to make a family, and a deeply drawn celebration of beauty and love in all its forms.
Book Information
Posts
Unfortunately, this is the first book that I started and deliberately didn't finish. I expected it to be a nice book based on the reviews that I read, by the description of it and its beautiful cover. However, I really didn't like it and stopped after reading roughly 25%. I wanted to see if it can catch me later, but it didn't happen. The story was not engaging to me at all. The feelings and the relationships of the characters didn't catch me, I had trouble to get emotionally engaged, I suspect because of the writing style of the author. It all felt rather flat to me. It also felt stretched without that something happens. It was also difficult to read without quotation marks for speech. I don't recommend this book.