Listen free for 30 days
-
Still Life
- Narrated by: Sarah Winman
- Length: 14 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction
Add to basket failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Listen with a free trial
Buy Now for £14.49
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
A Year of Marvellous Ways
- By: Sarah Winman
- Narrated by: Sarah Winman
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Year of Marvellous Ways is the much anticipated and utterly beguiling new novel from Sarah Winman, author of the international best seller When God Was a Rabbit. Cornwall, 1947. Marvellous Ways is a 90-year-old woman who's lived alone on a remote creek for nearly all her life. Recently she's taken to spending her days sitting on a mooring stone by the river with a telescope. She's waiting for something - she's not sure what, but she'll know it when she sees it.
-
-
Oh what a book, what a story.
- By Mrs S. on 11-09-15
-
When God Was a Rabbit
- By: Sarah Winman
- Narrated by: Sarah Winman
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is a story about a brother and a sister. It's a story about childhood and growing up, friendships and families, triumph and tragedy, and everything in between. More than anything, it's a story about love in all its forms.
-
-
My first review
- By Lou on 20-04-11
-
Lessons in Chemistry
- By: Bonnie Garmus
- Narrated by: Miranda Raison
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing. But it's the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute take a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant Nobel-prize-nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results.
-
-
One of the best audio books!
- By Anonymous User on 13-04-22
-
Tin Man
- By: Sarah Winman
- Narrated by: Sarah Winman
- Length: 4 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It begins with a painting won in a raffle: 15 sunflowers, hung on the wall by a woman who believes that men and boys are capable of beautiful things. And then there are two boys, Ellis and Michael, who couldn't be closer. And the boys become men, and then they meet Annie, and it changes nothing and everything. Tin Man sees Sarah Winman follow the acclaimed success of When God Was a Rabbit and A Year of Marvellous Ways with a love letter to human kindness and friendship, loss and living.
-
-
Delightful!
- By C. Long on 02-08-17
-
The Island of Missing Trees
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Daphne Kouma, Amira Ghazalla
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. The taverna is the only place that Kostas and Defne can meet in secret, hidden beneath the blackened beams from which hang garlands of garlic and chilli peppers, creeping honeysuckle, and in the centre, growing through a cavity in the roof, a fig tree. The fig tree witnesses their hushed, happy meetings; their silent, surreptitious departures. The fig tree is there, too, when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, when the teenagers vanish.
-
-
Narrators are horrible
- By idyll on 16-08-21
-
The Promise
- By: Damon Galgut
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The many voices of The Promise tell a story in four snapshots, each one centered on a family funeral, each one happening in a different decade. In the background, a different president is in power, and a different spirit hangs over the country, while in the foreground the family fights over what they call their farm, on a worthless piece of land outside Pretoria. Over large jumps in time, people get older, faces and laws and lives all change, while a brother and sister circle around a promise made long ago and never kept....
-
-
Difficult experience
- By #carylreads on 23-07-21
-
A Year of Marvellous Ways
- By: Sarah Winman
- Narrated by: Sarah Winman
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Year of Marvellous Ways is the much anticipated and utterly beguiling new novel from Sarah Winman, author of the international best seller When God Was a Rabbit. Cornwall, 1947. Marvellous Ways is a 90-year-old woman who's lived alone on a remote creek for nearly all her life. Recently she's taken to spending her days sitting on a mooring stone by the river with a telescope. She's waiting for something - she's not sure what, but she'll know it when she sees it.
-
-
Oh what a book, what a story.
- By Mrs S. on 11-09-15
-
When God Was a Rabbit
- By: Sarah Winman
- Narrated by: Sarah Winman
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is a story about a brother and a sister. It's a story about childhood and growing up, friendships and families, triumph and tragedy, and everything in between. More than anything, it's a story about love in all its forms.
-
-
My first review
- By Lou on 20-04-11
-
Lessons in Chemistry
- By: Bonnie Garmus
- Narrated by: Miranda Raison
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing. But it's the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute take a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant Nobel-prize-nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results.
-
-
One of the best audio books!
- By Anonymous User on 13-04-22
-
Tin Man
- By: Sarah Winman
- Narrated by: Sarah Winman
- Length: 4 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It begins with a painting won in a raffle: 15 sunflowers, hung on the wall by a woman who believes that men and boys are capable of beautiful things. And then there are two boys, Ellis and Michael, who couldn't be closer. And the boys become men, and then they meet Annie, and it changes nothing and everything. Tin Man sees Sarah Winman follow the acclaimed success of When God Was a Rabbit and A Year of Marvellous Ways with a love letter to human kindness and friendship, loss and living.
-
-
Delightful!
- By C. Long on 02-08-17
-
The Island of Missing Trees
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Daphne Kouma, Amira Ghazalla
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. The taverna is the only place that Kostas and Defne can meet in secret, hidden beneath the blackened beams from which hang garlands of garlic and chilli peppers, creeping honeysuckle, and in the centre, growing through a cavity in the roof, a fig tree. The fig tree witnesses their hushed, happy meetings; their silent, surreptitious departures. The fig tree is there, too, when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, when the teenagers vanish.
-
-
Narrators are horrible
- By idyll on 16-08-21
-
The Promise
- By: Damon Galgut
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The many voices of The Promise tell a story in four snapshots, each one centered on a family funeral, each one happening in a different decade. In the background, a different president is in power, and a different spirit hangs over the country, while in the foreground the family fights over what they call their farm, on a worthless piece of land outside Pretoria. Over large jumps in time, people get older, faces and laws and lives all change, while a brother and sister circle around a promise made long ago and never kept....
-
-
Difficult experience
- By #carylreads on 23-07-21
-
French Braid
- By: Anne Tyler
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When the kids are grown and Mercy Garrett gradually moves herself out of the family home, everyone determines not to notice. Over at her studio, she wants space and silence. She won't allow any family clutter. Not even their cat, Desmond. Yet it is a clutter of untidy moments that forms the Garretts' family life over the decades, from giving a child a ride to a painstaking Easter lunch, a fateful train journey to an unexpected homecoming. And it all begins in 1959, with a family holiday to a cabin by a lake.
-
-
Wonderful!
- By Nina S Bailey on 27-03-22
-
Songbirds
- By: Christy Lefteri
- Narrated by: Indira Varma, George Georgiou, Art Malik, and others
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nisha has crossed oceans to give her child a future. Now she spends her days caring for someone else's daughter while her own waits for her return, half a world away. For Petra, it is only natural to hire a domestic worker to keep her house clean and her family fed. Their lives have nothing in common, except the love they feel for their daughters. Then one day, Nisha vanishes. No one cares about the disappearance of a foreign domestic worker, except Petra and Nisha's secret lover, Yiannis, the only connection to her daughter back in Sri Lanka.
-
-
Profoundly moving
- By Karen Around The Table on 01-08-21
-
The Keeper of Stories
- By: Sally Page
- Narrated by: Jessica Whittaker
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
She can’t recall what started her collection. Maybe it was in a fragment of conversation overheard as she cleaned a sink? Before long (as she dusted a sitting room or defrosted a fridge), she noticed people were telling her their stories. Perhaps they always had done, but now it is different, now the stories are reaching out to her and she gathers them to her. When Janice starts cleaning for Mrs B - a shrewd and tricksy woman in her 90s - she meets someone who wants to hear her story. But Janice is clear: she is the keeper of stories, she doesn’t have a story to tell.
-
-
*Endearing*
- By Jaye22 on 01-05-22
-
The Lamplighters
- By: Emma Stonex
- Narrated by: Indira Varma, Tom Burke
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cornwall, 1972. Three lighthouse keepers vanish from a remote rock, miles from the shore. The entrance door is locked from the inside. The clocks have stopped. The principal keeper's weather log describes a mighty storm, but the skies have been clear all week. What happened to those three men, out on the tower? The heavy sea whispers their names. Black rocks roll beneath the swell, drowning ghosts. Can their secrets ever be recovered from the waves?
-
-
Best narration EVER
- By Kimberly G9 on 29-03-21
-
The Gardener
- By: Salley Vickers
- Narrated by: Salley Vickers
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Artist, Hassie Day and her sister, Margot, buy a rambling, run-down Jacobean house in Hope Wenlock on the Welsh Marches. While Margot continues her London life in high finance, Hassie is left alone to work the large, long-neglected garden. She is befriended by eccentric, sharp-tongued Miss Foot, who recommends Murat, an Albanian migrant, out of place in the village, to help Hassie in the garden. As Hassie works in the garden alongside Murat, she begins to ruminate on her past life, her hostile mother, her diffident father and the sibling rivalry that tainted her childhood.
-
-
a mystical morality tale
- By Rachel Redford on 29-11-21
-
A Terrible Kindness
- By: Jo Browning Wroe
- Narrated by: David Dawson
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tonight 19-year-old William Lavery is dressed for success, his first black-tie do. It's the Midlands Chapter of the Institute of Embalmers Ladies' Night Dinner Dance, and William is taking Gloria in her sequined evening gown. He can barely believe his luck. But as the guests sip their drinks and smoke their post-dinner cigarettes, a telegram delivers news of a tragedy. An event so terrible it will shake the nation. It is October 1966, and a landslide at a coal mine has buried a school: Aberfan.
-
-
A terrible kindness
- By Tracy morgan on 20-01-22
-
Small Pleasures
- By: Clare Chambers
- Narrated by: Karen Cass
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jean Swinney is a feature writer on a local paper, disappointed in love and - on the brink of 40 - living a limited existence with her truculent mother: a small life from which there is no likelihood of escape. When a young Swiss woman, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth, it is down to Jean to discover whether she is a miracle or a fraud. But the more Jean investigates, the more her life becomes strangely (and not unpleasantly) intertwined with that of the Tilburys.
-
-
Poignant, thoughtful & beautifully crafted
- By Rachel Redford on 26-07-20
-
Miss Benson's Beetle
- By: Rachel Joyce
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is 1950. In a devastating moment of clarity, Margery Benson abandons her dead-end job and advertises for an assistant to accompany her on an expedition. She is going to travel to the other side of the world to search for a beetle that may or may not exist. Enid Pretty, in her unlikely pink travel suit, is not the companion Margery had in mind. And yet together they will be drawn into an adventure that will exceed every expectation. They will risk everything, break all the rules and, at the top of a red mountain, discover their best selves.
-
-
Finding the way
- By Rachel Redford on 21-08-20
-
Violeta
- By: Isabel Allende
- Narrated by: Yareli Arizmendi
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first daughter in a family of five boisterous sons. From the start, her life is marked by extraordinary events, for the ripples of the Great War are still being felt, even as the Spanish flu arrives on the shores of her South American homeland almost at the moment of her birth. Through her father's prescience, the family will come through that crisis unscathed, only to face a new one as the Great Depression transforms the genteel city life she has known.
-
-
Good story...
- By "walespab" on 01-02-22
-
Once Upon a River
- By: Diane Setterfield
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 16 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A dark midwinter’s night in an ancient inn on the Thames. The regulars are entertaining themselves by telling stories when the door bursts open on an injured stranger. In his arms is the drowned corpse of a little child. Hours later the dead girl stirs, takes a breath and returns to life. Is it a miracle? Is it magic? Or can it be explained by science? An exquisitely crafted multilayered mystery brimming with folklore, suspense and romance as well as with the urgent scientific curiosity of the Darwinian age, Once Upon a River is as richly atmospheric as Setterfield’s best seller The Thirteenth Tale.
-
-
Delightful!
- By C. Long on 13-11-19
-
All My Mothers
- By: Joanna Glen
- Narrated by: Polly Edsell
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Between her emotionally absent mother and her physically absent father, there is nobody to answer them. Eva is convinced that all is not as it seems. Why are there no baby pictures of her? Why do her parents avoid all questions about her early years? When her parents’ relationship crumbles, Eva begins a journey to find these answers for herself. Her desire to discover where she belongs leads Eva on a journey spanning decades and continents—and, along the way, she meets women who challenge her idea of what a mother should be and who will change her life forever....
-
-
An absolute, must, must listen!
- By Rachel Redford on 18-08-21
-
Where the Crawdads Sing
- By: Delia Owens
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For years, rumors of the 'Marsh Girl' have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life - until the unthinkable happens.
-
-
Oh my word...
- By Private on 09-05-20
Summary
The instant Sunday Times best seller
Winner of Dymocks Book of the Year
A Guardian Best Book of 2021
A BBC Between Two Covers Book Club pick
Winner of the InWords Literary Award
From the author of When God was a Rabbit and Tin Man, Still Life is a big-hearted story of the families we forge and the friendships that make us.
1944, Italy. As bombs fall around them, two strangers meet in the ruined wine cellar of a Tuscan villa and share an extraordinary evening.
Ulysses Temper is a young British soldier, Evelyn Skinner a 64-year-old art historian living life on her own terms. She has come to salvage paintings from the wreckage of war and relive memories of her youth when her heart was stolen by an Italian maid in a particular room with a view. Ulysses’s chance encounter with Evelyn will transform his life – and all those who love him back home in London – forever.
Critic reviews
"Sheer joy." (Graham Norton, author of Home Stretch)
"A bear-hug of a book." (Rachel Joyce, author of Miss Benson’s Beetle)
"Utterly beautiful...filled with hope." (Joanna Cannon)
More from the same
What listeners say about Still Life
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- V. O'Regan
- 04-06-21
A gentle story of love and Florence
A lovely story about love and the beauty of Florence and its ability to stir the passions. A touch of A Room With A View woven in
14 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Helen SJ
- 15-06-21
A Beautifully intoxicating novel.
This is the third time I have read this novel. It is a fabulous book with wonderful characters.
If you love life, art and culture this is the book for you.
11 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Earnest
- 24-06-21
Gentle and accomplished memory-telling
Although there may not be the flourishes one might expect from a classic or a great drama, this finely wrought tale envelops the listener into such an engrossing tale. Of course Florence is one of the main characters but all of the people and the parrot will be hard to forget. May I be so bold as to say that this author surpasses the humanity and insight that Forster himself brought to his work. His work is splendid often enough but unlike this novel, too often the people themselves are scarified by his criticism and ‘wit.’ This is a far kinder, well rounded and humane treatment of a troupe of human beings on their way through life. I was very sorry to see them go when the novel finished.
10 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Patsy Barrow
- 18-06-21
Enchanting book
I loved the book . Utter joy,.Florence, beauty, wine, love and friendship. All that matters
8 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- Doreen Barnett
- 17-06-21
Deliciously evocative
Perfectly imperfect characters that make you laugh and cry. A richly told story that makes me want to immediately fly to Florence and see it again, but through the eyes of these much loved characters. I will miss them!
6 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ellen
- 15-06-21
Simply awesome
This is a stunner of a book, Everything about it is beautiful. A cast of very different characters who come together to form a family built on love, respect and trust. Books this special are few and far between, a true masterpiece.
6 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- keziah
- 15-06-21
Sarah Winnman feeds my soul
A beautifully written story of time and life and love. Rich descriptions of Florence makes you feel like you are there, feeling the warm sun on your skin. Like all her novels the characters become like old friends and you don’t want the story to end because you know you will miss them. I love the way Winnman writes her words make my heart grow a little bigger.
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Sarah Singleton
- 15-06-21
Delightful
Fascinating story superbly told, unexpected twists and turns hold your attention from beginning to end.
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Mountain Lewy
- 28-10-21
Very disappointing
Having read the glowing reviews of this book I was looking forward to a literary treat. However, despite having persisted, or rather endured, for three hours, I have given up. I am sure that there are those whom this story will enchant, as the reviews suggest, but I found it tedious, aimless, pointless and frankly depressing. The narrators voice was flat and disinterested, as if she found it as lack-lustre as I did, and perhaps, as she wrote it, she knew that she was in for 15 hours of endurance, rather than enjoyment. Please don’t let my review put you off, this could very well be the joy for you that has been described by others, but it was most definitely not for me. Sorry!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- TJ
- 29-07-21
50/50
We move from Eastenders to A Room with a View, carrying a parrot. Ultimately, I don't think it works.
My favourite section was with the young Evelyn. It felt vibrant and more Italian but doesn't save the novel.
Cress stole the show; he was brilliant until he died. And then we forgot about him completely.
Claude, the parrot, was a particular annoyance, fully conversing with humans and seemingly outliving all of humanity. I'd hoped the 1950s would see him swept up in a shiny new industrial vacuum cleaner. Alas, no.
Peg and Ulysses were so dysfunctional that I didn't care about either of them. They competed with Evelyn to be central, but why? What was the point?
There are too many references to swallows and swifts, a not-so-subtle nod to Ann Patchett's Dutch House, which I didn't enjoy either!
However, Sarah Winman does a brilliant job narrating with skilled accents and authenticity. It's just a shame I didn't enjoy the story.
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Joanna Butler
- 29-12-21
The best book ….
I haven’t enjoyed or been so completely immersed in a book for some years. My first introduction to this author. Loves the story. Atmospheric without being obvious; funny and real; honest. The characters were so vivid and alive I feel bereft now it’s finished. I’d love to go to dinner with them all and find out how they are now. Can’t recommend strongly enough
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Susie D
- 08-05-22
Heartwarming and inspiring
I adored this book! It’s a beautifully written story about interesting and complex people who share deep, heartwarming relationships. At times I laughed out loud and towards the end I cried real tears. It evoked a range of emotions through a simple story of people who love and support each other through-out the course of their lifetimes. Sarah Winman narrates her own book brilliantly and makes you fall in love with each of her characters one by one. The relationships between an old man and a tree, a grieving soldier and his dead comrade, a group of Eastenders and an Italian village, all come together under the Florentine skyline and an African parrot’s wingspan. It is both magical and relatable and inspired me to book a trip back to Italy.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Anonymous User
- 17-04-22
Engrossing
A beautifully written book with an engrossing story.
Thoroughly enjoyed it.
Very satisfying and very well narated.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Michelle Mundell
- 22-01-22
Beautifully Narrated
Story-telling at its best. I loved it. Some may find it very slow-going, but the narrator really brought the characters to life.