Dave's Book Blog: "Still Life" by Sarah Winman

Saturday 20 January 2024

"Still Life" by Sarah Winman

Caravaggio's Basket of Fruit (public domain)

The Waterstone's Book of the Month for March 2022.

A brilliant book. A group of oddball characters travel from a grey 1950s London pub setting to a technicolor Florence. There's a lot of banter, a lot of humour (I laughed aloud at several points, which I rarely do), some moments of sadness (I cried when one of the leading characters died) and a message that life is to be enjoyed.

I read it shortly before watching the film, Poor Things and this book and that film share (with Caravaggio) an artificiality of style coupled to extreme naturalism. This is signposted right from the start. In the first part (Man is the Measure of All Things 1944), a critical meeting between Evelyn and Ulysses which includes dialogue which sounds like sort of thing you wish you'd said at a posh dinner party if you hadn't drunk too much of that wonderful wine, is sandwiched between two sections where the dialogue has perfect verisimilitude, each speaker making short contributions which are often beside the point and fail to respond to the other speaker. During the middle section, the art movement Mannerism is mentioned ("the style is what we would call early Mannerist. ... a deliberate denial of realistic style, calculated and artificial.") and I think this is a clue to what the author is trying to do.

Which is a fascinating start.

The deliberate artificiality continues. There is a cast of eccentric characters, swiftly but indelibly drawn, including:

Ulysses Temper, an incurably optimistic soldier from London whose superpower is making friends
Evelyn Skinner, a lesbian art critic
Peg, a brassy barmaid with attitude
Cressy, an old man who has dialogues with trees and an interest in philosophy; he has visions which lead to extraordinarily successful betting coups
Pete the pub piano player and composer and occasional star of musical theatre, who has girlfriends across Europe
Claude, a parrot who quotes Shakespeare
Alys, the result of a one night stand between Peg and a GI, a kid with attitude growing up in Florence
A cherry tree with a long perspective on time a farewells: a cherry tree "Think about it. Leaves." (Somewhere Between an Atom and a Star 1946 - 53)
Col, the pub landlord, violently protective of his daughter who drives a second-hand ambulance which has a misfiring siren (in the UK ambulances had bells before 1963 which I presume is not an error but a deliberate introduction of artificiality).
Des, a businessman who can't help making money: "Two words ... disposable syringes"

This is a book about the joy that is in life. It is a joyous read.

Selected Quotes:

"He was a recent scholar ... Covered in the afterbirth of graduation - shy, awkward, you know the type. Entering the world with no experience at all." (Man is the Measure of All Things" 1944)
"A meagre stain in the corridors of history, that's all we are." (Man is the Measure of All Things" 1944)
"Hair of the dog, she thought; she'd need the whole bleedin' pelt to get moving this morning." (Man is the Measure of All Things" 1944)
"Cherry blossom and a glass of stout. Hard to beat." (Somewhere Between an Atom and a Star 1946 - 53)
"The world never turned out the way that you wanted it to. It simply turned. And you hung on." (Somewhere Between an Atom and a Star 1946 - 53)
"I've never seen him in a hat before ... Me neither. .... It'd look even better on his head." (The Stuff of Dreams 1953 - 54)
"The salty porky chickeny-ness of it, said Col in a moment of rare epicurean elegance." (The Stuff of Dreams 1953 - 54)
"The music led Cress to his mum. Six kids, no money and only a view from the sink. Christmas just another day. The time he learnt that she too had dreams. Hard to reconcile that pain. Had taken a lifetime and still not there yet." (The Stuff of Dreams 1953 - 54)
"They left the next day, Peg and Ted as early as decency would allow, and the margins on that were close." (The Stuff of Dreams 1953 - 54)
"She looked at her watch. Curtailed, once again, by the scythe of time." (The Most Unlikely-Looking Pair 1954-59)
"The was an herbaceous hook to the spring air, the slow roll of a lawnmower moving methodically across the quad. It was the season of bloom and leaf growth, and the bare branches appeared bewildered by the vibrancy of emerging livery." (The Most Unlikely-Looking Pair 1954-59)
"Time: mid-morning. Weather: sun blazing, no respite, no cloud. Gasping." (The Most Unlikely-Looking Pair 1954-59)
"She was a Michelangelo enthusiast and spent hours gazing at David's allure." (La Dolce Vita 1960)
"Sunglasses hid the ten years older and the sun highlighted the ten years blonder." (It's Just the Way of Things 1962 - 66)
"He was still worried about the age difference, but the elderly contessa reassured him, saying, As long as there's still grass on the pitch ..." (I'd Love Nothing in the World So Well As You 1968 - 79)
"She taught Pete the stuck-in-a-glass-box mime routine and Pete spent the following week trying to escape from something he couldn't see." (I'd Love Nothing in the World So Well As You 1968 - 79) Metaphorical?
"His nudes look absent-minded, as if they've carelessly lost their clothes and need to go and search for them." (All About Evelyn)
"So, time heals. Mostly. Sometimes carelessly. And in unsuspecting moments the pain catches and reminds one of all that's been missing. The fulcrum of what might have been. But then it passes. Winter moves into spring and swallows return. The proximity of new skin returns to the sheets. Beauty does what is required. Jobs fulfil and conversations inspire. Loneliness becomes a mere Sunday. Scattered clothes. Empty bowls. Rotting fruit. Passing time. But still life in all its beauty and complexity." (All About Evelyn) I wonder whether the reference to rotting fruit hints at the Caravaggio Still Life which shocked viewers when it showed fruit past its eat-by date? Caravaggio's hyper-realistic style was in many ways a reaction against Mannerism while still maintaining a dramatic artificiality of composition, particularly in regard to his heightened 'tenebrist' lighting effects.