Still Life - A beautiful Book

I have just finished reading Still Life by Sarah Winman. This has become the second best book I have ever read, the best being Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf.

We read Still Life as part of the Massey University Book Club and I had no great expectations for the read.

Then POW! it hit me from the very first page. I was enthralled, something which doesn't happen a lot in your late sixties.

The book is set in Florence and the East End of London and has an eclectic group of characters, most of them delightful, only one real rotter in the bunch.

The story starts in the last days of World War II. Ulysses Temper, the main character is the driver for an English officer Captain Darnley. As they have driven up Italy from South to North, Darnley, a well educated man, has been introducing Ulysses to Italian culture and art with Ulysses being a keen learner.

The Germans had been pilfering art works so many of the art treasures of Florence had been hidden out of harms way and were now being rescued and sent back to the owning galleries. Evelyn Skinner, an art historian, meets Ulysses by chance and asks him how she can contact the Army folk responsible for recovering the works of art. She is an older women in her early sixties. Ulysses is 23 at the time. An unlikely friendship arises and this is one of the main threads of the story which actually covers Evelyn's life from the early 1900's when she first visited Florence.

Just before Ulysses returns to England he rescues a suicidal Italian man who is about to jump from above a local restaurant. After the rescue they spend several hours together though Ulysses speaks very little Italian and the Italian man does not speak English. Their conversation is accompanied by wine and food.

Ulysses returns to the East End of London where he works at a public house. His estranged wife, Peg,  has had a child fathered by an American soldier while Ulysses was overseas. This daughter, Alys, becomes another major character in the book. Peg asks for a divorce which Ulysses agrees to but he takes responsibility for Alys along with Peg.

The man who Ulysses saved from suicide dies several years after the war ends and leaves Ulysses his pensione, and Ulysses and Alys move to Florence. The pensione has two stories so they start taking in guests and over time many of Ulysses friends visit. An old friend, Cress, also accompanies Ulysses and Alys.

Over the years a number of friendships develop and provide a captivating panorama of life in Florence including the floods in the 1960's which damaged many of the art works and books that had escaped the war.

I was mesmerised by the book and also listened to the audio book which is narrated by Winman herself.

This is a book that will stay with me for life and I have already started my reread!

If you are interested in art, history, Italy, relationships both heteronormative and LGBTQIA+ then this may be the book for you.

Going to Florence is now on my bucket list.

DK

Funding my Literary Pursuits

Virginia Woolf On Reading the Original

I found this interesting quote in Common Reader I,

“The temptation to read Pope on Addison, Macaulay on Addison, Thackeray on Addison, Johnson on Addison rather than Addison himself is to be resisted, for you will find, if you study the Tatler and the Spectator, glance at Cato, and run through the remainder of the six moderate-sized volumes, that Addison is neither Pope’s Addison nor anybody else’s Addison, but a separate, independent individual still capable of casting a clear-cut shape of himself upon the consciousness, turbulent and distracted as it is, of nineteen hundred and nineteen”.

I agree with her. It is always best to read the primary source to get a clear view of what exactly the writer is saying.

DK

Boy Eats Universe

Boy Eats Universe is a unique book. Telling the life story of a young boy, Eli,  in a dysfunctional South Brisbane  suburb it grips your attention from the first page.

Mum is in prison, Dad is gone, stepfather is a drug runner and brother doesn’t talk.

Despite the frequent drug references this book is a gritty and ultimately positive story of life outside of the norm.

This is a first novel by author, Trent Dalton, and it is loosely based on his own life.

Opening your Mind to New Perspectives

Every now and again a book comes across your path which changes your worldview forever. Someone recommended the following book to me called, Brilliant Green: The Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence by Stefano Mancuso and Alessandra Viola. This book has revolutionised my thinking on the plant world. Human and animal life makes up less than 0.3% of the biomass on earth so as the authors say we are no more than a trace element on earth. 

While humans have 5 main senses plants have those 5 and 15 more.

This is a must read book if you want an insight into the world of plants and the way they have evolved to fit in with the environment.

Reading the First and Ultimate Pleasure

We persevere, because reading still brings information, stimulation, and solace. It is the first and the ultimate pleasure. Willard Spiegelman.

What can I say, but Yes.

I have spent close on 60 years as a reader and I will read until I die. Reading is truly the first and ultimate pleasure of my life.

Virginia Woolf on Letter Writing

The art of letter-writing is often the art of essay-writing in disguise.

Woolf while talking about women in literature made the germane quote above about women writers. Until the 1800's it was considered unseemly for women to be writers, but letter writing was considered to be acceptable. We begin to get a glimpse of the lives of women through women's eyes emerging in their letters. While many of the letters may have been somewhat bland, they did give some insight into the lives and concerns of women in the 1700's.

In fact some of these letters were lengthy and polemic and would nowadays be considered as essays..
Woolf's own letters also reveal much of life in late Victorian and early Georgian times.

DK

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Samuel Johnson on the Common Reader

“… I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be generally decided all claim to poetical honours.”—Dr. Johnson , Life of Gray .

Long live the common reader. This is the quote from which Virginia Woolf took the title of her books, The Common Reader1 and The Common Reader2.

I am reading these books again and I'm refreshed with Woolf's style. No academic jargon or philosophical high flying. Just readable essays that we "commoners" can appreciate.

Ciao

DK

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