Sarah Winman’s Still Life and Jan Wallace Dickenson’s The Sweet Hills of Florence both feature the city of Florence. The city itself is more than a backdrop in both novels. It acts almost as a character in the stories.
Still Life begins at the end of the second world war and spans four decades. The two main characters meet as allied troops prepare to enter Florence. Evelyn Skinner is an educated English woman in her sixties with an extensive knowledge of art history and Ulysses Temper is a young English soldier.
Most of the novel follows Ulysses as he returns from the war, reconnects with his girlfriend Peggy and his pub-based friends in England, and finally moves to Italy. I enjoyed reading about the group of friends around Ulysses. Sarah Winman realises their affectionate banter very effectively. Still Life is an easy book to read with no real highs and lows in the story.
Its charm lies in its central group of characters, its sensory descriptions of place, and its authentic dialogue. Picking up the book midway felt like catching up with old friends. A jarring feature of the novel, however, was the final section in which Evelyn features. In my view, this section should have come earlier.
The Sweet Hills of Florence is an historical novel set in the last years of World War II. Mussolini has lost most of his power, the Nazis occupy the ancient city, and the populace lives in a state of fear and deprivation. Against this backdrop, Dickinson has placed two couples, Mussolini and his mistress Clara and cousins Annabelle and Enrico who have left a comfortable city life to become rebels, resisting the Nazis, and assisting Jews and others to escape.
At the start of the book, 13-year-old Annabelle witnesses Hitler and Mussolini march together through Florence. With a focus on Annabelle’s life as a rebel and her love for Enrico, the novel follows her to the end of the war before leaping forward to her old age in Australia. For me, the fascination of The Sweet Hills of Florence lay in its Italian setting. The city of Florence with its art treasures and the Italian language used throughout made this a most interesting and enjoyable novel to read.
If you would like to learn more about the art and history of Florence, both novels are great sources of information and entertainment.
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