I must admit to being completely in awe of AS Byatt. I am always struck by her qualities of great, luminous intelligence, her keen eye, her amazing sense for detail, especially emotional detail. I wonder what it's like to be her and just be seeing so much and understanding so much! I get the sense of this incredibly rich inner life, so complex and layered and full of possibility. Reading her makes the world seem bigger and denser and brighter and more important. This wonderful book of short stories demonstrates a wide range of styles and moods, from witty ghost stories to precise, intimate memoir, from savage fable to the terrors of daily life. Byatt invests the smallest details with so much meaning that it points at living, and experiencing, in a deeper and more completely human manner.