The sometimes perilous holidays are behind us, but February looms, as only February can in New England. To get you through—it's a short month, it pays to remember—I've got just the book.
Still Life by Sarah Winman takes place in London and Florence and spans four decades, beginning in Italy during WWII. It is an incredibly charming, beautifully written, and somewhat meandering tale of a set of, well, eccentrics, who form a family of sorts.
Turns out that sometimes a cobbled-together family works better than an inherited one, though of course there are complications. Wouldn't be a true family without complications. These include: unusual inheritances; complicated love lives; quirky, memorable characters; and a talking parrot—but don't let that put you off. Or better yet if you like that sort of thing. Somehow it works. Winman holds one leg over the cliff of sentimentality, but never quite plunges.
Still Life is a story about love, the criticality of art to humans and society, war, family, and the floods in Florence. A novel to get lost in—one of the rare ones you read slower to prolong the finishing. It is, as the mother of a longtime patron to whom I recommended the book said, "Delicious."
Carin Pratt is one of the remarkably knowledgeable crew at the Norwich Bookstore—and an ardent recommender of books. Before she landed in these parts, she spent 27 years at CBS News, including two decades as the executive producer of Face the Nation.
Previous Enthusiasms: