What I'm Reading Now

Sarah Winman, Still Life

I saw this recommended on one of the book blogs I follow, I don't remember whose, but thank you, thank you. This is an amazing book. 

I recall the book blogger saying it was a story of love, found families, and E.M. Forster, which was enough to get me to hunt it down; the Forster is mostly influence, though he does make an actual appearance. 

The novel starts on the outskirts of Florence, Italy in the middle of WWII, with a young British soldier and a sixty-year old British art historian, who may or may not be a spy. Ulysses Temper is with the Eighth Army, the Allied forces fighting to take Italy back from the Axis; Evelyn Skinner is here to help salvage the art of Florence which has been hidden or lost during the various invasions. They have a brief encounter as their two missions intersect, a magical encounter, made magic -- Winman hints -- at least in part because of where they are, there in the hills above Florence, and because of what they are doing, locating and retrieving the art of Florence. One work specifically -- Pontormo's The Deposition from the Cross -- runs through the novel, wielding influence on all the characters.

Ulysses and Evelyn don't meet again until the 1970s, but the novel follows their lives and the lives of the characters who are their friends and family, through the decades until they meet up again. Ulysses returns to England, where he lives with all his friends and neighbors as well as his wife and his wife's child (conceived with an American soldier who then abandons her) in a fairly grim bit of London; but when the kid, as he calls his wife's child, is five, Ulysses inherits an apartment in Florence, and moves with the kid and one of his friends, Cress, to live in Italy thereafter. 

The writing here is amazing, fully immersive, with immense narrative pull. The contrast between the grim, damp, fetid slum in England and the impoverished but beautiful square in Florence is wonderful, and Winman's ability to make us see and believe in the transformative power of art is just as wonderful. Plus the characters are great. This is my new favorite writer, though sadly my library only has two of her books, this one and one another (already requested!). I will have to hunt the other down in used bookstore.

David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks 

I liked this the best of any of Mitchell's books I've read. Each section of the book is set in a different time and follows the same group of characters, starting in the 1980s and continuing into the future, after climate change has wrecked the world (though Iceland is doing pretty well). We follow secondary characters as well as main characters as they age through the decades, and as the world changes around them. 

There's some science fantasy elements involving a cabal of immortals having a war throughout time, which I enjoyed; but the characters and the use of place and time are the best part of this. There's a semi-happy ending. I liked this one a lot, and it taught me a new word: pandiculate.

Claire Keegan, Foster

I read Keegan's earlier short-story-published-as-a-book, and liked it well enough, so I picked this one up when I saw it at the library. The earlier one, Small Things Like these, worked well as a novella/long short story. This one is even shorter and really would have been improved with some more length. It's the story of an Irish girl, maybe eight years old? Maybe a little younger. It's never made clear, except she's school age, and her mother seems to be having a child a year, with the result that this child, the oldest child, is suffering from neglect. The girl is sent off to live with her aunt and uncle, whose only child has died, and blooms there, under their care. Then she's sent home again, just after her mother's new baby is born.

The language and descriptions of mundane life on this little farm in the Irish countryside are great, as is the characters development. If this book had been four times as long as it currently is, I would have loved it. As it is, it feels truncated and rushed -- just as we settle in to enjoy the story, it's over. Disappointing. Keegan is clearly a gifted writer. Someone should tell her to slow down.