'The short stories unroll swift and glittering like a bolt of magic cloth' - Sunday Telegraph From the Booker Prize-winning author of Possession.
A.S. Byatt (1936-2023) was a novelist, short-story writer and critic of international renown. Her novels include Possession (winner of the Booker Prize 1990), the Frederica Quartet and The Children's Book, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. She was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999, and was awarded the Erasmus Prize 2016 for her 'inspiring contribution to life writing' and the Pak Kyongni Prize 2017. In 2018 she received the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.
Rich physical details, lush sensual descriptions of people and
places...Byatt's engaging message is that art, curiosity and
stories and save us. Now read on
*Independent on Sunday*
Byatt weaves myth and art into bewitching fables...an astonishing
display of imagination. The whole collection has a kaleidoscopic
beauty
*Time Out*
Drenched in colour, spangled with optical effects, the yarns and
parables in Elementals pay rapt attention to a world of light
*Independent*
"Cold", the story at the centre of Elementals is entirely
fabulous...Its tenor is voluptuous and melancholy, like that of
Oscar Wilde's fairy stories, with some of the erotic edge of Angela
Carter's...These stories are full of colour and light
*Sunday Times*
In a sparkling year for short stories, A.S. Byatt takes all the
prizes...A wonderful series of reflections on the harsh realities
of life (loneliness, death and betrayal) overlaid with a
goassamer-light cloak of passion, mystery and ancient magic
*Marie Claire*
Brilliantly mingling reality with the surreal atmosphere of folktales and fairy tales, Byatt follows The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye with an equally virtuosic and beguiling collection. The subtitle is the key to the oppositions that inspire these six stories. They teem with contrasts between inexplicable compulsions and societal norms, the extremes of love and hate, the mysterious tension between the rational and the mystic, and between the creation of art and the demands of daily life. Byatt's meticulous control of language gives these narratives a visual and tactile dimension that's almost palpable. Permeated with descriptions of colors, temperatures and atmosphere, full of sensuous imagery, each is an immersion in a richly imagined world. A compulsion to flee from the reality of her husband's dead body sends the protagonist of "Crocodile Tears" to sun-drenched Nimes, where she meets a man from Norway who is researching folktales common to both regions. Slowly and agonizingly, each regains the ability to deal with loss. In "Cold," Fiammarosa, the princess of a mythical kingdom, can exist only in a frigid atmosphere, but she marries a prince from a desert realm where burning sand is spun into glass; the contrastÄand the eventual mingling of the two polaritiesÄis conveyed in passages of gorgeous description. The protagonists of most of these stories work in the creative arts or have strong ties to literature. (Interestingly, the central character of the one disappointing tale, "Baglady," a nightmarish scenario that lacks resolution, does not.) "The world is full of light and life, and the true crime is not to be interested in it," says a painter, one of the characters in "Christ in the House of Martha and Mary." Byatt conveys this conviction via an unfettered imagination, an intense lyricism combined with distilled and crystalline prose, and an astute grasp of the contradictory impulses of human nature. Six illustrations. Author tour. (May)
Rich physical details, lush sensual descriptions of people and
places...Byatt's engaging message is that art, curiosity and
stories and save us. Now read on -- Michele Roberts * Independent
on Sunday *
Byatt weaves myth and art into bewitching fables...an astonishing
display of imagination. The whole collection has a kaleidoscopic
beauty -- Mark Sanderson * Time Out *
Drenched in colour, spangled with optical effects, the yarns and
parables in Elementals pay rapt attention to a world of
light -- Boyd Tonkin * Independent *
"Cold", the story at the centre of Elementals is entirely
fabulous...Its tenor is voluptuous and melancholy, like that of
Oscar Wilde's fairy stories, with some of the erotic edge of Angela
Carter's...These stories are full of colour and light -- Lucy
Hughes-Hallett * Sunday Times *
In a sparkling year for short stories, A.S. Byatt takes all the
prizes...A wonderful series of reflections on the harsh realities
of life (loneliness, death and betrayal) overlaid with a
goassamer-light cloak of passion, mystery and ancient magic --
Carolyn Hart * Marie Claire *
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