Short works representative of Byatt’s beautifully evocative prose.
A career-spanning selection of short stories from one of England’s distinctive voices.
Byatt is known for her novels—especially the Booker Prize–winning Possession (1990)—but the short story format suits her beautifully as well. She favors adjective-spangled cascades of images, excavates the dictionary for rare specimens, and sends iambs and anapests cavorting across the paragraphs. A little of this can go a long way (though, as the novels demonstrate, sometimes a lot can go even further). These stories, selected from periodicals and previous collections, present compact versions of her favored themes, preoccupations, strengths, and occasionally weaknesses, and they’re short enough that her densely decorative prose rarely grows wearisome. As readers of Possession and Angels and Insects (1993) know, she has an affinity for the Victorian era; in “Precipice-Encurled,” an ambitious young painter falls in love with the young lady he’s sketching before losing more than just his heart as he pursues a visual idea inspired by one of Monsieur Monet’s new paintings. Disdaining the austerity of modernism, Byatt leaps forward to postmodernism, with its framing devices and art about art. In “Raw Material,” for instance, a pair of exquisite descriptions of Victorian housework—“How We Used To Black-Lead Stoves” and “Wash Day”—are enclosed in a semisatirical melodrama about a creative writing teacher and his students. Many of the stories contain jeweler’s-loupe views of artists and art, whether the artists in question are sculptors, painters, or cooks. Many of the stories address classic feminist questions about women’s work: To what extent are women free to choose how to express their creativity, and how is their work valued? Not all of the stories have aged well; in “The Chinese Lobster,” Byatt’s signature lyrical exoticism is not so charming when she applies it to the proprietors of a Chinese restaurant and the food they serve, and a Dean of Women Students unquestioningly accepting the word of a Distinguished Visiting Professor over that of the graduate student who has accused him of rape feels rather different in the post–Me Too era than it must have to its 20th-century readers. Some of the best stories in the collection are fairy tales or fantasies; in “A Stone Woman,” for example, a woman in mourning for her mother turns to stone—literally.
Short works representative of Byatt’s beautifully evocative prose.Pub Date: Nov. 23, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-32158-4
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
IN THE NEWS
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
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