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The Little Black Book of Stories
 
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The Little Black Book of Stories (Hardcover)

by A.S. Byatt (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 292 pages
  • Publisher: Chatto & Windus (6 Nov 2003)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0701173246
  • ISBN-13: 978-0701173241
  • Product Dimensions: 17.4 x 12.2 x 3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 502,205 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #41 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > B > Byatt, A.S.

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Product Description

Review

Five new stories from the author of Possession, A Whistling Woman, Angels and Insects and many other celebrated novels. The word 'black' in the title draws attention not just to an attractive feature of the cover design (austere black books stand out well in a display with all their gaudy display of competing designs), but also to a darkening of thematic tone, a lowering of the lights, as Byatt places her characters in a dark wood, has them argue about death and body parts, and introduces a particularly unforgettable evening class. A new collection from one of our most distinguished writers and critics. A major event, of course, and the literary world will sit up and take notice.


Product Description

This title contains five stories, which are funny, spooky, sparkling and sad. Two women walk into a forest, as they did when they were girls, confronting their childhood fears and memories. An innocent member of an evening class turns out to have her own decided views on how to use "raw material".
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Customer Reviews

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Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic!, 11 Mar 2004
By A Customer
In these five short stories Byatt once again displays her talent for making the magical out of the mundane. Byatt takes a simple cloth and embroiders it until she has a tale woven richly with mythology and allegory, and strung with references classical and modern, literary and popular. Her well-structured stories are deceptively simple. You close the book feeling satisfied but something draws you back. When you look again, the focus of the stories seem to have shifted slightly and the different facets become apparent.

In The Thing in the Forest we discover that when something terrible happens to us at a young age it can become both more real and less real than anything else in our lives. The memory of the thing begins to mould the person we become and continues to shape our actions as an adult until, for better or worse, it leads us back to the source of our terror. " 'Sometimes I think that thing finished me off,' said Penny to Primrose".

Body Art takes us to that crossroads where modern art meets the base realities of the human body and science has to contend with human emotion.

A Stone Woman is about grief and transformation: a beautifully crafted fairytale, vibrant with colour and texture, with a setting that moves from the landscape of the flesh to the landscape of Norse mythology.

"There was fresh blood on the forget-me-nots and primroses in the carpet. It was not nice." Raw Material is about words. Why do we consider some subjects more worthy of our creative attention than others? Should creative writing be therapeutic? And what precisely is 'Real writing'? Set (as is much of Byatt's work) in a literary environment, where a lacklustre lecturer discusses these issues with the unmemorable members of his creative writing class, this story winds its way to a surprising end.

The Pink Ribbon takes us into the world of poor mad Mado and her suffering husband and carer James. When one day a beautiful young woman knocks on their door begging for sanctuary, James begins to feel that she knows a little too much about them both...

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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Lose yourself in Byatt's imagery, 8 Aug 2005
This review is from: The Little Black Book of Stories (Paperback)
Of the stories in this book, the best, in my opinion, is the Stone Woman. It is an odd, captivating story. Byatt's meticulous, evocative descriptions of the properties of different stones turns the disquieting image of the woman's transformation into something beautiful and strangely natural. This tale feels almost like folklore or a fairy tale by the end.

The other stories in this collection not as enchanting, although I would have happily bought this for the Stone Woman alone.

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