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READING 11/5/23 - ‘STILL LIFE’ - SARAH WINMAN
Today I finished reading ‘Still Life’ by Sarah Winman. This was the Waterstones Fiction Book of the Month for March 2022.
Ann and I have read it for our 99p Kindle book group and I have previously read ‘When God Was a Rabbit’.
I have to say we struggled a bit. We both finished it but found the writing style disruptive. Winman’s dialogue doesn’t use speech marks and this combined with a variety of voices means that you are forever having to check who is who and what is what. The fact that this didn’t seem to get much better for either of us as we progressed says more about the style than our ability as readers.
(Previously for Elizabeth’s book group I have read ‘‘Girl, Woman, Other’ by Bernadine Evaristo. That has limited punctuation but flowed really well once your head had got used to it).
I loved the Florence location however and the art references were very good. Claude the parrot was excellent.
This is to be my birthday Quote of the Week next year:
‘And on 8 January at four in the afternoon … ‘ (Winman, 2021, p.243).
‘1960′ (Winman, 2021, p.244).
‘Happy birthday, he said.’ (Winman, 2021, p.373).
The best though is:
‘It was the kind of night to settle on the sofa with a grappa and a large parrot for company.’ (Winman, 2021, p.293).
Obviously I am thinking of a parrot mask.
REFERENCE
Winman, S. (2021) ‘Still Life’. Amazon.com [E-book]. Available at: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Still-Life-stunning-Sunday-bestselling-ebook/dp/B08N5NZ8PZ/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1686725056&refinements=p_27%3ASarah+Winman&s=digital-text&sr=1-1 (Accessed 11 May 2021).
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