A new collection of Byatt stories is always a winner and never fails to delight. This one takes an unexpected turn, bringing shivers as well as mag...
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Dec 16, 2009
Imogen
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I love the way that she writes- it's restrained and beautiful. I also love the way she twists stories halfway through every time- like, maybe now there should be a monster! Or, now a young woman should show up in the old man's life and we'll see what happens. She establishes characters and setting so well, then changes them pretty boldly, in ways that honestly surprise me. And work.
Ultimately though I feel like she does an "I'm an old lady and I don't believe in wrapping storie More...
Ultimately though I feel like she does an "I'm an old lady and I don't believe in wrapping storie More...
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Sep 24, 2007
Ashley
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I first discovered A.S. Byatt's work a few years ago when I picked up this book, quite honestly because the cover was pretty. This little volume hooked me into her style right away, and I've devoured all of her other works since.
Her short stories have a quality that is so unique - many of them are set in the real world that we know, but have that one element of fantasy, mystery, or horror that tips them over the edge and makes for fascinating writing. "A Stone Woman" is my favori More...
Her short stories have a quality that is so unique - many of them are set in the real world that we know, but have that one element of fantasy, mystery, or horror that tips them over the edge and makes for fascinating writing. "A Stone Woman" is my favori More...
Mar 02, 2008
tatiana
rated it: 
I would have given it a solid four stars if I didn't already rank Byatt as one of my favorite contemporary writers, because this is most certainly a well-written and imaginative little collection of dark tales. However, I do think it lacks the thoughtful and poetic quality of much of her other work, so consider this a three and a half star review.
Of the five stories, "A Stone Woman" and "The Thing in the Forest" were the most successful at displaying Byatt's tal More...
Of the five stories, "A Stone Woman" and "The Thing in the Forest" were the most successful at displaying Byatt's tal More...
Jan 26, 2008
Felicity
rated it:
A good story makes me want to read the next one; a great one makes me close the book, almost involuntarily. I want to read the next one, but not yet, not yet. There were several such stories in this little volume of five short stories.
Byatt, here, is inventive and unexpected. She brings characters rapidly to life and into their strange fates, and captures moments of vivid humanity. The stories are both dark and luminous.
The least strong, in my opinion, is "Body Art, More...
Byatt, here, is inventive and unexpected. She brings characters rapidly to life and into their strange fates, and captures moments of vivid humanity. The stories are both dark and luminous.
The least strong, in my opinion, is "Body Art, More...
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Dec 07, 2009
Charles
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This review originally ran in the San Jose Mercury News on May 2, 2004:
Look at -- no, better yet, listen to the way this story begins:
''There were once two little girls who saw, or believed they saw, a thing in a forest.''
How can you not read that story? As that sentence delicately steps from naive to sinister, it evokes the shivery delights of campfire tales.
Which is precisely what A.S. Byatt intends it to do. The first of the five stories in her slim but More...
Look at -- no, better yet, listen to the way this story begins:
''There were once two little girls who saw, or believed they saw, a thing in a forest.''
How can you not read that story? As that sentence delicately steps from naive to sinister, it evokes the shivery delights of campfire tales.
Which is precisely what A.S. Byatt intends it to do. The first of the five stories in her slim but More...
Dec 02, 2009
Claire
rated it:
This would be a 2.5, but I'll bump it up to 3 for writing quality alone.
Not sure how I feel about this one. Honestly, the reviews on the back of the book blew it so out of proportion that I felt I should feel underwhelmed, so the fact that I am is all the more disappointing. Ms. Byatt certainly knows how to turn a phrase, but her stories never found the niche I desired. Were they intended to be creepy? Insightful? Mesmerizing? One cannot know.
I think I hold short storie More...
Not sure how I feel about this one. Honestly, the reviews on the back of the book blew it so out of proportion that I felt I should feel underwhelmed, so the fact that I am is all the more disappointing. Ms. Byatt certainly knows how to turn a phrase, but her stories never found the niche I desired. Were they intended to be creepy? Insightful? Mesmerizing? One cannot know.
I think I hold short storie More...
May 10, 2010
Kirsta
rated it:
I have a hard time with short story collections for several reasons and yet I still pick them up. This collection highlights two of my biggest issues with short stories.
Issue number 1 (the story that should be longer) is perfectly illustrated in Body Art. This story was so rich and layered and was screaming for further development so as to be novel length. I felt like the story was concluded as it should be, but was left wishing that the story had been much longer and more explore More...
Issue number 1 (the story that should be longer) is perfectly illustrated in Body Art. This story was so rich and layered and was screaming for further development so as to be novel length. I felt like the story was concluded as it should be, but was left wishing that the story had been much longer and more explore More...
Feb 05, 2009
Byatt's readers fall into two camps. Some find her enthusiasm for minutiae in these Gothic tales infuriating���not everyone wants to read an extended description of the proper treatment of stoves. These detractors find this collection too smart for its own good, its many facts and metafictional digressions obstructing real emotion. Most readers, however, fell under Byatt's spell. For all her book-learning, many agree that Byatt can spin a story that's captivatingly scary���and perhaps more. Severa
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Dec 20, 2011
Eric
rated it:
So far I really liked the first story and was disppointed with the second one, so not sure how this book will pan out for me. So I'll give each story a star rating as I read and then give the book an adjust my overall star rating accordingly as I go.
1. The Thing in the Forest - 4 stars
2. Body Art - 1 star
3. The Stone Woman - 5 stars - loved it
4. Raw Material - 3 stars
5. The Pink Ribbon - 3 stars
Now that I've finished, it was a mixed bag for me. Mos More...
1. The Thing in the Forest - 4 stars
2. Body Art - 1 star
3. The Stone Woman - 5 stars - loved it
4. Raw Material - 3 stars
5. The Pink Ribbon - 3 stars
Now that I've finished, it was a mixed bag for me. Mos More...
Nov 06, 2011
Sarah
rated it:
While I'm not a huge short story reader, I do like Byatt's stories. Her fairy tales are my favorites, but these are good as well. They are mostly set in the present/ modern era (unlike most of Byatt's novels, incidentally, which is an interesting distinction. I wonder why she tends to set her huge novels in the past -- and a very detailed, very well-researched past, very evocative past -- but her shorter works in the present. Something to ponder, or to check her non-fiction work for.) My favori
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Jul 22, 2011
Tim
rated it:
Byatt is a very musical writer. She crafts some poetic sentences, and her love of words is contagious. I was especially struck by the beauty of the lapidary vocabulary in "A Stone Woman." But that story, and many of the others, was too long for its own good. Indeed, Byatt tends to get caught up in her own word smithery. "Raw Material" was an intriguing one. As a reader, I felt I was meant to agree with the protagonist's opinion of his star pupil's writing, writing that
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Mar 30, 2010
Bitsy
rated it:
I wasn’t, going in, expecting fairy glens and unicorns or anything like that. But, I still wasn’t quite prepared for the direction these fairy tales written for adults took. They were modern, entirely, in the first place. And, secondly, they were centered around World War II and its aftermath in the UK.
Each tale brought home to me a different aspect of humanity, whether it was our different ways of dealing with problems, difficulties and unknowns in our lives... perhaps even our ways More...
Each tale brought home to me a different aspect of humanity, whether it was our different ways of dealing with problems, difficulties and unknowns in our lives... perhaps even our ways More...
Oct 09, 2009
craige
rated it:
I think Jen M. nailed it in her review. There is just enough of the fantastic in these stories to make them intriguing. And after the first story, all the others really drew me in. They are not the kinds of stories that wrap up neatly necessarily, which I don't mind. In fact, in many cases, I tend to prefer it since life often does not wrap up neatly either.
Does anyone want this book? I have a bunch of books to mail out next week, so what's one more?
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Does anyone want this book? I have a bunch of books to mail out next week, so what's one more?
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Oct 07, 2010
Stacy
rated it:
I have read only one story "Raw Material" for my university course paper. However, I have no wish to read other stories, I am really impressed with this one.
At the same time it is harsh and poetical, strong and easy understandable.
The author's vocabulary for creating the story (suppose Cicely's written stories could be called "embedded") and describing such usual things is adorable. And the most important - while you are reading description, you are really in: you More...
At the same time it is harsh and poetical, strong and easy understandable.
The author's vocabulary for creating the story (suppose Cicely's written stories could be called "embedded") and describing such usual things is adorable. And the most important - while you are reading description, you are really in: you More...
May 03, 2009
Sharon
rated it: 
Having heard good things about A.S. Byatt's mastery of the short story, I was anxious to read this book. Unfortunately, I found myself disappointed.
Byatt certainly knows how to begin a story. The first offering in this collection is "The Thing in the Forest" and it begins, simply and intriguingly, with this sentence: "There were once two little girls who saw, or believed they saw, a thing in the forest." Note the deliberate phrasing here with the word 'believed'. More...
Byatt certainly knows how to begin a story. The first offering in this collection is "The Thing in the Forest" and it begins, simply and intriguingly, with this sentence: "There were once two little girls who saw, or believed they saw, a thing in the forest." Note the deliberate phrasing here with the word 'believed'. More...
Dec 13, 2008
I have never decided whether I like A.S. Byatt or not. I think I do, but why can't I get past the first page of Possession? Oh well. Her stories have always been good. Better than good. Little Black Book is her most recent collection, and what she insists upon in each of the five stories is that the supernatural - or the merely bizarre - is more real, is the most real thing there is. She moves the reader beyond life as it is normally lived and the world as it is normally perceived; she leav
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Jul 30, 2011
the stories are so well told, it has wonderful allietrations and skillfully imagery with very vivi descriptions. body art is my favoruitite story yet the stone woman has the most amazing descriptions of different surfaces, he is a master of wrods, shown off the writing group story. very enjoyable to read, most poigant scense setting is the baby being born in body art, the way he geenrates tensison and builds up pace and captures the seesence of the rush ecitement and urgency of the operating the
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Aug 10, 2010
Monica
rated it:
I purchased this collecting expecting to read strange and unsettling stories, and was not disappointed. I always end up flipping voraciously to a blank page, a painful realization that the story I was eager to see the resolution through...has actually already ended.
But these "teasers" are enough to invite me to pick up a full blown A. S. Byatt novel.
I liked "The Thing in the Forest", "Body Art", and "Raw Material" because I'm p More...
But these "teasers" are enough to invite me to pick up a full blown A. S. Byatt novel.
I liked "The Thing in the Forest", "Body Art", and "Raw Material" because I'm p More...
May 22, 2011
Eh?Eh!
rated it:
From what others have said, Byatt has the sort of background where I know I'm missing quite a bit when I read anything she writes, not even catching a stray ripple. That first story, whuh? Even the other four, where I caught my breath or found myself with a sore back from unconsciously hunching as I became enrapt with the stories, I wonder what I'm missing. Still, those four, thumbs up. My take on them may be the obvious take, but they dance on my mind. Loss and parenthood, grief and geolog
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Jul 30, 2011
Josh
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The tone of this collection is best summed up when a character in the last story, ‘The Pink Ribbon’ reflected on another episode involving his wife’s dementia: “This then, was a tale of strangeness he could just about tell to a friend in a pub. It had an aesthetic horror to it that was pleasing”.
From the literal and physical in ‘The Thing in the Forest’ and ‘A Stone Woman’; to the metaphysical in ‘The Pink Ribbon’; and possibly psychical in ‘Body Art’ and ‘Raw Material’, the stories all deal wi More...
From the literal and physical in ‘The Thing in the Forest’ and ‘A Stone Woman’; to the metaphysical in ‘The Pink Ribbon’; and possibly psychical in ‘Body Art’ and ‘Raw Material’, the stories all deal wi More...
May 25, 2010
Jamie
rated it:
Byatt never fails to entertain, though this may be my least favorite work of hers yet (Possession, Children's Book, Elementals being the others). This isn't to say it's a bad collection of stories--it's actually quite good, hence the four stars--but just that I didn't find myself as enchanted with these stories as with some of her other writing (or maybe it's that I was expecting another book of short fiction as stunning as Elementals).
A Stone Woman is a fabulous story, and actually More...
A Stone Woman is a fabulous story, and actually More...
Oct 20, 2010
Amber
rated it:
Byatt writes beautiful prose, brisk but voluptuous in all the right places. This book is also full of masterful storytelling of imagination and pyschological depth: there is beauty and violence and gruesome bodies and the pathos of growing old.
I esp. like the story about the woman who turns to stone and travels to Iceland to become a mythical being. And in "Raw Materials", I liked how Byatt examines the relationship between human melodrama and human simplicity, as well as More...
I esp. like the story about the woman who turns to stone and travels to Iceland to become a mythical being. And in "Raw Materials", I liked how Byatt examines the relationship between human melodrama and human simplicity, as well as More...
Sep 13, 2009
“There were once two little girls who saw, or believed they saw, a thing in a forest.” Thus begins A.S. Byatt’s fairy tale. Read this story at bedtime, then try to sleep!
Little Black Book of Stories collects five of A.S. Byatt’s complex, riveting fictions. Each one is marvelous in its own way, and two of the tales are masterful examples of Magical Realism.
“The Thing in the Forest” uses the trope of vulnerable, motherless fairy tale children. Byatt’s little girls are evacu More...
Little Black Book of Stories collects five of A.S. Byatt’s complex, riveting fictions. Each one is marvelous in its own way, and two of the tales are masterful examples of Magical Realism.
“The Thing in the Forest” uses the trope of vulnerable, motherless fairy tale children. Byatt’s little girls are evacu More...
Aug 09, 2008
Meika
rated it:
This one promises to be good reading. I read the first story a couple of nights ago, and though I think it qualifies as horror (creepy creature in the woods eats innocent creatures) it's less horrific than it is Gothic. I think the subtext told the real story.
Another nice thing about this collection is that it's broken down into smaller chunks of A.S. Byatt writing. I find her novels to be overwhelming at times (possession has been 'currently-reading' for a couple of years now). Byatt More...
Another nice thing about this collection is that it's broken down into smaller chunks of A.S. Byatt writing. I find her novels to be overwhelming at times (possession has been 'currently-reading' for a couple of years now). Byatt More...
Dec 16, 2007
lynne
rated it:
A. S. Byatt is an author that just doesn't quite click with me, although this collection of short tales is so far the most palatable of the three books I've read of hers so far.
Unlike The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye, this collection is not "obviously" "fairy tales" but many of them are certainly fantastical:
1. The Thing in the Forest : how two different girls deal with a traumatic childhood experience in the woods (reminded me of The Game I'd read, about More...
Unlike The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye, this collection is not "obviously" "fairy tales" but many of them are certainly fantastical:
1. The Thing in the Forest : how two different girls deal with a traumatic childhood experience in the woods (reminded me of The Game I'd read, about More...
Nov 10, 2007
John
rated it:
Only three stars because I admired these stories far more than I enjoyed them. I liked the first and last stories (The Thing in the Forest and The Pink Ribbon) best, but the middle part of the collection sags a bit. The Stone Woman is painfully slow - maybe the point is to help the reader share in the protagonist's experience of turning to stone. Raw Material is salvaged by the creepy twist at the end, but the stories within the story felt like work. I really liked Body Art until the disappo
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Nov 16, 2009
Hazel
rated it:
I'm not usually a fan of short stories but I bought this collection because one of the stories is about Alzheimer's. It's very well written as you'd expect from ASB and made me realise all over again how focused and disciplined you need to be in this form of writing. She's dealing with a range of subjects, no common theme, but overall she's combining fact and myth, folk and fairytale with gritty human problems, and somehow managing to leave you musing and wondering.
Mar 16, 2010
Wendy
rated it:
Meh...
Call me uncouth, but I just don't get the whole short story thing.
The almost always have some metaphor for death, sex or dissapointment. Or all three...
I also like a story to have a quick and interesting hook, followed by a logical series of events that lead to an awesome ending. The whole 'you figure out what issue I happened to be working through while I wrote this short story' is cliche.
Yeah, I'm judgemental, I know.
Call me uncouth, but I just don't get the whole short story thing.
The almost always have some metaphor for death, sex or dissapointment. Or all three...
I also like a story to have a quick and interesting hook, followed by a logical series of events that lead to an awesome ending. The whole 'you figure out what issue I happened to be working through while I wrote this short story' is cliche.
Yeah, I'm judgemental, I know.
Jan 09, 2012
Lauren
rated it:
I really underestimated this book by it's cool cover thinking it would turn out to be just that, a cool cover.
The stories were enough to inspire the imagination to dwell on the half formed endings, but i really didn't mind it so much, because the twisted tales kept me guessing and thinking and even re-reading some parts to make sure I had read them right.
All in all a good book
The stories were enough to inspire the imagination to dwell on the half formed endings, but i really didn't mind it so much, because the twisted tales kept me guessing and thinking and even re-reading some parts to make sure I had read them right.
All in all a good book
Jan 16, 2011
Heather
rated it:
This set of five stories was a bit harder for me to get through than The Matisse Stories; they were darker and more disturbing, sometimes bordering on the unreal/fantastic rather than emotional situations. The title of the book is appropriate... However, Byatt is definitely a master writer and story teller!
The Thing in the Forest is my favorite and the one that has stayed with me the strongest -- it was spectacular! The horror, the impression IT made on two lives, the sense of what w More...
The Thing in the Forest is my favorite and the one that has stayed with me the strongest -- it was spectacular! The horror, the impression IT made on two lives, the sense of what w More...
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