Synopses & Reviews
Review
"This charming small volume (41/2 × 7') contains three stories by a Booker prize-winning author. Already a bestseller in England and Canada, it would make a perfect gift to a book-loving friend. The elegant illustrations for each story are line drawings by Matisse, and the paper cover shows three paintings in color, each of which figures in some way in a story. The stories tell of the situation and feelings of ordinary women, which suddenly explode in unexpected ways. The combination of well-written events with suggestions of art masterpieces is a stroke worthy of the praise this book has received." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Synopsis
Three delightful stories inspired by a painting of Henri Matisse--from the Booker Prize-winning author of Possession and "a writer of dazzling inventiveness (Time). An] exquisite triptych.... Richly drawn and touches upon things that matter to people. --People
These stories celebrate the eye even as they reveal its unexpected proximity to the heart. For if each of A.S. Byatt's narratives is in some way inspired by a painting of Henri Matisse, each is also about the intimate connection between seeing and feeling--about the ways in which a glance we meant to be casual may suddenly call forth the deepest reserves of our being. Beautifully written, intensely observed, The Matisse Stories is fiction of spellbinding authority.
Full of delight and humor.... The Matisse Stories is studded with brilliantly apt images and a fine sense for subtleties of conversation and emotion. --San Francisco Chronicle
About the Author
A.S. Byatt is the author of the novels Possession (winner of the Booker Prize in 1990), The Game, and the sequence The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, and Babel Tower. She has also written two novellas, published together as Angels and Insects, and four collections of shorter works, including The Matisse Stories and The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye. Educated at Cambridge, she was a senior lecturer in English at University College, London, before becoming a full-time writer in 1983. A distinguished critic as well as a novelist, she lives in London.