My trouble with magic realism is, like those other portmanteau concepts you meet in the arts e.g. abstract expressionism in fine art and Power Pop in music, you have to get the balance right. When done well like Cheap Trick’s early albums or Matthew Sweet’s sublime Girlfriend release, power pop is near perfect. Ditto with the best magic realism books from Haruki Murakami and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but with Still Life I would suggest a small re-edit and a new cover design. One with a big splash sticker on the front like the ones you see on overly sweetened breakfast cereal boxes – in big letters “NOW WITH 70% LESS PARROT.” There are other elements in the story that have a magic realism vibe. A man converses with a Cherry tree. Another sees the future but for me the parrot was just a bit too much.
But here is the thing, I’m nitpicking. The rest of the book is charming. It is like a long leisurely lunch with good friends who you haven’t seen for a while and is a lovely companion with a cup of tea and your favourite cake. It appeals to all the senses and the author’s power of description in summarising the Italian La Dolce Vita kept me reading till the end. Anna Winman focusses on character and place, not plot and Still Life is a novel that reads better when you take it slow. There are no quotation marks to make it clear when someone is speaking (versus thinking) and the author primarily writes about everyday episodes in the lives of ordinary people. A lot still happens but not really in an “A gets you to B which brings on C” kind of a way. And that is fine. I liked almost all the characters too, except for Charlie the parrot, I thought they were just right and if the author’s powers of description evocatively rhapsodises the buildings, food, art and weather of Florence, she counters that with tight dialogue when working with the wide range of characters and their respective emotional journeys. Bit like Cormac McCarthy in that way, if in no other.
For there are journeys in Still Life, but they are not through distance, after all the whole book is set either in or around Florence or a pub in East London. This book is a journey through time from the early 1900s to the 1970s. A lot can happen in a life over seventy years and the book uses the different characters’ backgrounds, ages and experiences against this turbulent period of European history to mirror the social changes and upheavals of the time.
Most importantly this is a book about the importance of art and culture, family, friendship and community, and who and how we choose to love. There are many relationships in the book, some platonic, some sexual and all are presented with warmth and I believe a great deal of truth.
Sarah Winman also includes many references and nods to E.M. Forster’s 1908 book Room With A View, even setting up a fictional meeting between one of her characters and the young E.M. Forster in a last chapter flashback. A Room With A View, also set in Florence, is arguably the literary benchmark for investigating the ability for Italy to ignite passion, uncover secret desires and the wish to break conventions in visiting English of a certain class. Although in Still Life, a big, hopeful and clever feast of a book, it now has real competition.
Does Still Life over egg the carbonara? At over 400 pages in length it can feel overheated occasionally, but heart, great construction and memorable characters go a long way with me so I put aside my inner curmudgeon and went with it. Now if we could just trim back on that parrot.
Scott Hoffman (Collingwood Chapter)
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