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Still Lives: The stunning Reese Witherspoon Book Club mystery

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L]ush...Winman covers much ground, including the devastating 1966 flood of the Arno, a cameo appearance by E.M. Forster, and many rich sections about art, relationships and the transcendent beauty of Tuscany, and while it occasionally feels like two novels stitched into one, for the most part it hangs together. Readers will enjoy this paean to the power of love and art." - Publishers Weekly But then I just lost interest with the drawn-out rhopography of life in Florence and London, filled with long lectures on art history and artists, interrupted by a slow-moving timeline to nowhere. Here and there a monologue on politics. Whenever I read a book about Florence I like to see if I could have helped with the research. It wasn't long before I detected the first error here. The statue of Dante was not beside the church in 1944 as the author places it; it was in the middle of piazza Santa Croce and only moved after the flood of 1966 when the first surge of floodwater reached Dante's ankles and almost threatened to topple him from his pedestal. It's strange that she covers the flood in this novel and does an excellent job of evoking it but didn't come across this rather famous piece of information in her research. I think it's three times she has Dante in the wrong place. Something I thought about a lot, especially in the second half of the book, was the dramatic tension. Sure, there was some provided by the historical events, particularly the two I referred to above. But when a story relies so much on characterisation, where does it come from? Winman has done a superb job in creating tension in two ways. Firstly, there is the almost sliding-doors level of tension that comes from watching Ulysses and Evelyn dancing around each others' lives for literally years. At times it had me groaning for them! When will they finally meet again??? Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered". Milwaukee Art Museum. Archived from the original on 30 June 2022 . Retrieved 4 March 2023.

The author undoubtedly has a talent to make words sing. This was alphabet music. She covered several decades of European renaissance in her descriptions of places and people. Her characters were likable and lovable and often hilariously funny. Cressy's dialogue with prunus serrulata(Japanese Cherry blossom tree) tugged at my heartstrings. His devotion to Claude,the philosophical parrot, guaranteed entertainment. The terrible, but comical incident with Davy; Col's infatuation with his wailing 1930s 's, right old boneshaker ambulance, which promised to be a charisma lobotomy, said Peg; and a few other incidents brought much joy and laughter about. Praise For This Book “It’s a thrilling mystery that will leave you wondering which characters you can and can’t trust . . . There’s a twist at the end that still keeps us up at night, it's THAT good.”—Reese Witherspoon (A Reese’s Book Club x Hello Sunshine Selection) All the problems arose for me when Evelyn Skinner is the focus. It's a shame because she's a good character - a bon-vivant lesbian who always has a ready smile. She's a good character except when the author tries to convince us she's an authority on art history. The book begins with her and begins badly. It's odd that a novel with feminist aspirations allows a woman to do a job women were not entitled to at the time, that of being on the front lines as art conservers. There's a silly scene in the Boboli gardens when a sniper must have a modern high-powered rifle to be able to take shots at people in the gardens from the tower at Bellosguardo. And it's here the crass sermons on art history begin which reminded me of the stuff I used to translate in mass market tourist guides. It is hard to envision a reader who won't be smitten by Winman's characters and their banter." - Booklist (starred review) I'm not convinced that the book was either story- or character driven. It was issue-driven, hence the multitude of characters to introduce as many issues as possible into the tale.

Still Life

Maria Hummel's Still Livesis moody and restless, propelled by a gradually intensifying sense of unease. Hummel envelops the reader in the LA art scene . . . Her journey illuminates the misogyny which allows a culture to turn murdered women into objects for consumption.”— BuzzFeed, 1 of 30 Exciting New Books to Add to your Summer Reading List

And they couldn’t believe how so many roads had either led to him or led to her. And for Evelyn, there was equal sadness as there was delight at hearing how close they’d been to one another, how touchable, if only – the preciousness of time, you see. Fear mounts as the hours and days drag on and Lord remains missing. Suspicion falls on the up–and–coming gallerist Greg Shaw Ferguson, who happens to be Maggie’s ex. A rogue’s gallery of eccentric art world figures could also have motive for the act, and as Maggie gets drawn into her own investigation of Lord’s disappearance, she’ll come to suspect all of those closest to her. a b c d e "Still Life with Books, Jan Lievens, c. 1627 - c. 1628". Rijksmuseum. Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap. Archived from the original on 26 January 2023 . Retrieved 4 March 2023. A love story, if a somewhat atypical one. A story of friendship, of family, both the ones we are born into and the ones that we create from the people we meet as we travel through life. It is the story of war, the destruction to the land, and the destruction to the people whose lives are affected, and the friendships that were born of the time. A love story to a place and time, and to love, in all its many forms.Still Life is simultaneously expansive and intimate, a heady brew of disasters, both natural and manmade, of death and life, of the power of great art and, most especially, the resonance of those loves we carry for a lifetime. A truly spectacular achievement. I've never read anything quite like it." - Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves In the image there is a lute case, which resembles a lute. The images of books display the bindings and they have soft covers of either leather or parchment. These books are used primarily for keeping documents or bills. [1] The books are portrayed as empty bindings without substance. [8] The items in the image all appear to be old and discarded things. In the image there is a pewter jug, and a pewter plate with bread roll. There are two globes and just above the lute case on the wall there is a palette. [1] The exciting male characters were mostly single, or gay, or brute vox populi of the deplorables, and ugh, the epitome of red-meat masculinity. By the grace of all the planets, one of them became an anti-hero and, at last, most lovable. Well, he stopped eating meat, now you've got to love him.

In 1627 Lievens also painted a similar work titled, Vanitas still life. In the painting he used a skull, a violin, an extinguished candle and an hourglass, ostensibly to illustrate mortality. The painting was also attributed to Rembrandt for many years until a 2014 examination by experts at the Rijksmuseum determined that it was the work of Lievens. [10] Reception [ edit ] Evelyn was the carrier of the real message in the plot: She represented women: Single women, gay women, were sophisticated, the noble stars. Married women were all beyond par - abused, lost. Religious women were martyrs in a world created for men, by men. This novel begins in 1944 Italy as WWII comes to a close. Readers meet English art historian, Evelyn Skinner, who at nearly sixty-four years of age is holed up in a modest albergo in the Tuscan countryside awaiting Florence’s liberation from Nazi occupation. This opening scene leads Evelyn into the life of young British Private, Ulysses Temper, for an evening that promises to ripple through both their lives.Mystery and murder cloud this feminist story set in the heart of Los Angeles’ art scene. When an avant–garde artist goes missing on the day her groundbreaking exhibition opens, the story spins out in many provocative directions.”— Entertainment Weekly, 1 of 20 New Books to Read in June Private Ulysses Temper is a soldier with the British army in 1944, chasing the Germans out of the Tuscan hills at the end of WW2, when he meets Evelyn Skinner, a sixty year old art historian, on a road in Tuscany. She has come to Italy to help salvage art works from the ruins of war and over wine and cheese in a dusty cellar, regales him with tales of visiting Florence as a young woman, where she first fell in love, met E.M. Forster and developed a passion for art. Little does Ulysses realise then how much this chance meeting will sew the seeds that will work to radically change his life before he finally meets Evelyn again.

This next point comes down to personal preference, but my god I wish Winman used quotation marks. As a stylistic choice, I understand that it can lend itself to the slightly whimsical, flowing writing style that she has, however in a book with quite as much dialogue as this one (entire scenes can be practically all dialogue), it just feels like a barrier to overcome while reading it. At times it's entirely unclear not only who is speaking, but whether anyone is at all or whether a sentence is part of the prose.

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Ulysses Temper is an English soldier in Tuscany, Italy, in 1944 at the beginning of the story. 24-years-old, Ulysses has fallen in love with the Italian countryside. With his good friend, Captain Darnley, they have sought out frescoes and other gems of artwork. Ulysses meets Evelyn Skinner, an art historian in her 60s, who is in Italy to help as art that has been looted by German soldiers is recovered. Evelyn is part of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives program. Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation's Treasures from the Nazis by Robert M. Edsel is a book about the history of the Monuments Men. Another book on the subject is The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History by Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter. ‘The Monuments Men’ movie directed by George Clooney and based on the book was released in 2014. As Darnley shows Evelyn a recovered cache of art, Evelyn ever the teacher, talks about the style of the art, the use of color, then says, “It’s about feeling, Ulysses that’s all. People trying to make sense of something they can’t make sense of.” Throughout the book, I get the sense that Winman is marrying emotion to art, to music, to food. Just like the Monuments Men, Winman is returning something that we may have lost while listening to the daily news, our sense of beauty and wonder in the world. Starred Review. Hummel builds visceral intimacy around 'women's oppressive anxiety about [their] ultimate vulnerability' in this often uncomfortable tale about the media's fetishistic fascination with the violent murders of beautiful women." - Publishers Weekly Hummel’s novel ultimately offers an intriguing insider’s view into a high–stakes, turbulent industry, from peculiar artists to fabulous exhibitions. With deliberate pacing increasing the tension, the story line revolving around the public’s fascination with graphic crimes against women serves as a chilling reminder that such violence continues to occur in many forms.”— Library Journal Ginny, Col's daughter — Cressy called her engrossing and she was engrossing, till she opened her mouth and a kid tumbled out. And as I have mentioned, I loved it. My reaction to this book would definitely have been different pre Covid-19. It is just ‘not my cup of tea’, as the British always manage to say with such damning snobbery. A swooning, sentimental melodrama about Forster and what has to be one of the most romantic novels ever written? (Even if he was a ‘queer’, as Evelyn points out helpfully – she can be as blunt as Claude the parrot.)

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