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The Little Black Book of Stories Paperback – 3 January 2005

by A S Byatt (Author)

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A new collection of Byatt stories is always a winner, and this one takes an unexpected turn....

A new collection of stories from A. S. Byatt is always a winner, and this one takes an unexpected turn, bringing shivers as well as delights. Leaves rustle underfoot in a dark wood- two middle-aged woman walk into a forest, as they did when they were girls, confronting their fears and memories and the strange thing they saw in their childhood - or thought they saw - so long ago. A man meets the ghost of his living wife; a woman turns inexorably, but beautifully, to stone. A distinguished obstetrician and a young woman artist find they have sharply contrasting ideas about body parts, birth and death; an innocent member of an evening class harbours unexpected views on 'raw material'-The stories in this marvellous collection are by turns funny, spooky, sparkling and haunting. THE LITTLE BLACK BOOK holds its secrets, adding a dark quality to Byatt's famous skill in mixing folk and fairy tale with everyday life.

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Review

These little stories by one of Britain's foremost grandes dames of the writing world are a delightful surprise, packing a much greater punch than many full-length novels... They are moving, thought-provoking, witty and shocking all at once ― Sunday Telegraph

A cabinet of curiosities... Glitteringly beautiful. Byatt is a vivid colourist ― Sunday Times

As ever, Byatt's language has the clear intensity of a poem ― Daily Mail

Byatt is the grande dame of British fiction... Those acquainted with her previous work will recognise her fascination with the supernatural, as well as the erudition and attention to detail that are trademarks of her style ― Financial Times

Each story resembles a novel in miniature-there is a unique, experimental feel to this engaging, unsettling collection that will not hinder the author's reputation as a literary giant ― Scotland on Sunday

Book Description

A new collection of Byatt stories is always a winner, and this one takes an unexpected turn....

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ VINTAGE ARROW - MASS MARKET
Publication date ‏ : ‎ 3 January 2005
Edition ‏ : ‎ 1st
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0099429950
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0965921367
Item weight ‏ : ‎ 205 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13 x 1.8 x 19.8 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 13,620 in Short Stories (Books)
- 23,252 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
- 37,900 in Literary Fiction (Books)

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67 ratings

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M. de Koning Gans
The Little Black Book of Stories
Reviewed in Germany on 11 January 2017
Verified Purchase

I did not read the book myself, because it was a Christmas present to my daughter. She was delighted, but I don't think she has been reading it yet.

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J R LIM
Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 March 2018
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Perfect in Every way

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Roger Brunyate
Stories about stories
Reviewed in the United States on 3 October 2008
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Although billed as "fairy tales for grown-ups" like the author's earlier collection, THE DJINN IN THE NIGHTINGALE'S EYE, fantasy plays a major part in only one of the five longish stories in this book, and two are entirely realistic. But they are connected nonetheless by a strong sense of the fabulous, for all five are about the making of stories themselves, or the ways in which art is hewn out of life.

Sometimes literally so. The central story, "A Stone Woman," features a middle-aged woman who feels herself turning slowly into stone, and her friendship with an Icelandic sculptor engaged in the reverse process, of finding the life hidden in rocks and boulders. The woman's observation of her own transformation shows Byatt's writing at its most iridescent: "She saw dikes of dolerites, in graduated sills, now invading her inner arms. But it took weeks of patient watching before, by dint of glancing in rapid saccades, she surprised a bubble of rosy barite crystals, breaking through a vein of fluorspar, and opening into the form known as desert rose, bunched with the ore flowers of blue john."

Compare the simplicity with which the book opens: "There were once two little girls who saw, or believed they saw, a thing in a forest. The two little girls were evacuees, who had been sent away from the city by train, with a large number of other children. They all had their names attached to their coats with safety-pins, and they carried little bags or satchels, and the regulation gas-mask." As the simple details pile up, Byatt takes us back, not just into childhood, but the specific childhood of Londoners of our generation at the start of the Blitz. Rather at C. S. Lewis does at the start of THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE, she creates a context of dislocated reality, in which fabulous things can happen. Lewis's children grew up and had to leave Narnia behind, but Byatt's two schoolgirls are affected for the rest of their lives, though in different ways. One seeks refuge in objectivity and becomes a scientist, the other becomes a storyteller, but both feel a strong need to revisit this first magic at least once in later life.

In "Raw Material," a teacher of creative writing praises the work of an older student of extraordinary talent, but is ignorant of the real-life circumstances that give rise to it. In "The Pink Ribbon," the husband of a woman suffering from senile dementia (itself a form of story-making), receives a surprise visitor who persuades him to rewrite the narrative of his marriage from another perspective -- a situation not unlike the ending of Ian McEwan's ATONEMENT. And in "Body Art," a male gynecologist strikes up a friendship with a homeless art student who is creating Christmas decorations for his hospital. But what begins as an artistic debate gradually begins to invade real life, eventually taking a physical form that leaves both of them changed.

These are five varied stories that will amuse, challenge, move, and chill their readers by turns, leaving them above all with a sense of wonder at the mysterious human power of telling stories -- especially when the voice is that of such a master as A. S. Byatt.

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contessa malia
From dark to bizarre, to brilliant!
Reviewed in the United States on 13 August 2004
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There is an axiom that states "Don't judge a book by its cover." In this case, the black fading into charcoal gray dust jacket (with a flowering golden sprig) is a precursor of things to come. The stories are dark, somber and brilliant. Who else could construct a series of stories where grief, anger and abuse are manifested in such creative, innovative and bizarre ways?

A woman loses her mother. The relationship, while lightly touched upon, was probably an inseparable one (the daughter states, "She was the flesh of my flesh. I was the flesh of her flesh.") Post the mother's death, her daughter begins to turn to stone but not just any stone; she begins layer by layer to manifest the various exotic stones found in Iceland. They are veined, with complex glints of underlying colors and multiple hues.

Then there is an Icelandic sculptor who goes to enormous difficulty to bring her rigid, statue-like self back to the land of his ancestors. Was this all a metaphor for a woman who was experiencing grief? An unmarried woman, the reader might conjecture, who was faced with an enormous personal transformation without her mother? One who needed a sculptor to introduce her to the real and essential self whom she had not previously recognized?

The bizarre journey proceeds as the reader meets the members of a writing class, experiences the rich memories of its oldest class member, as she describes everyday life when running a household was much more labor intensive. There was the cast iron stove to be kept highly polished on a daily basis, the laundry that was to be boiled, stirred and immersed into multiple rinses. Then came the laborious ironing! The woman's writings depicted a gentle, hardworking woman, and an anachronism to other class members who tore her writings apart because of their being perceived as commonplace. Who is she really? The writing class teacher later discovers part of her mystery...much to his horror!

A pink ribbon is the only adornment of a woman whose very self is being lost to dementia. Through a "tarted up" ghost, the reader discovers her in retrospect. To say more is to spoil!

Byatt is a genius! The stories might seem just that ... short stories. It's the pondering and opportunities for analysis that the stories invite. There exist many possibilities for each of the characters, their lives, their challenges, their joys and obstacles. Byatt layers her challenges to the reader. On the surface, what were the stories about? But beneath the layers, what were the stories really about?

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bernaamaro
Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 October 2015
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Gorgeous!

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