Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

A best seller in England, where it was published in 1993, this beautifully illustrated volume contains three stories-each a sort of "still life" inspired by a particular Matisse painting-of seemingly ordinary women: a middle-aged teacher forced to play psychiatrist to her self-centered hairdresser; a cleaning woman with a passion for knitting; and a college dean discussing a case of sexual harassment with the accused over lunch in a Chinese restaurant. Byatt (Possession, LJ 11/1/90), who has been in the news lately for her principled stand against huge advances for literary fiction, is a consummate prose stylist, possessed of both perfect pitch for dialog and a painterly eye for the telling details that flesh out these characters and reveal their essential humanness. Highly recommended for fiction collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/94.]-David Sowd, formerly with Stark Cty. District Lib., Canton, Ohio (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

In three masterfully written stories loosely inspired by Matisse paintings, Byatt (Possession) dazzles with her evocation of sensuous detail while adroitly emphasizing the interconnectedness of life and art. In each one, a woman teetering on the edge of losing her emotional equilibrium finds a small nugget of comfort after some unsettling surprises. Susannah, the troubled middle-aged heroine of ``Medusa's Ankle,'' is drawn into a hairdressing salon by a Matisse reproduction on the wall. Byatt understands that a woman is most acutely vulnerable looking at her unadorned image in a mirror, and when the self-absorbed hairdresser confides that he plans to leave his wife for a young lover, Susannah's sudden outburst as she contemplates the loss of her youth, her attractiveness and her future is movingly real. Dr. Gerda Himmelblau, ``a solitary intellectual nearing retirement,'' has a quieter epiphany in ``The Chinese Lobster,'' but it is facilitated by a man whose sensibility about art and life she shares. Two doughty women captivate the reader in ``Art Work,'' a delightfully surprising tale in which the ``received'' nature of art and a woman's role as muse are questioned with amusing insight. Byatt's lapidary prose shimmers with the colors she describes so intensely. Her understanding of human relationships is no less brilliant. Line drawings not seen by PW. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

Byatt has drawn on the twin spheres of her literary passions, fiction and criticism, to create a triptych of stunning stories. Each ever-deepening tale revolves around a painting by Matisse. The paintings and the stories are about women, but Byatt's women have none of the abandon of Matisse's serenely voluptuous beauties: her women work, worry, and sacrifice. They are responsible and painfully honest. We gradually realize that they are also simmering with anger and grief as Byatt's strategically neutral tone gives way to ravishing descriptions of sounds, colors, and smells that bring each setting to life and steer each conflict to its eviscerating conclusion. In "Medusa's Ankles," one of Matisse's monumental nudes, a rosy spread of femaleness, graces a hair salon where a distinguished translator hopes to regain a hint of her youthful looks. In "Art Works," Byatt delves into the mysteries of creativity with a brilliant group portrait of three very different artists: a generous wife, her petulant husband, and their regal housekeeper. And finally, in "The Chinese Lobster," Byatt contrasts the tortured self-loathing of an anorexic art student with the smug opulence of Matisse's nudes and ponders the lure of suicide. These are breathtakingly beautiful stories, rendered with precision and poetry. --Donna Seaman

Kirkus Book Review

Inspired by Matisse paintings, these three splendid stories (two have appeared in the New Yorker) pay homage to the artist as they offer equally memorable verbal portraits of apparently ordinary lives driven by pain and disquiet. Just as Byatt (Angels and Insects, 1993, etc.) prefaces each story with an appropriate illustration, each also begins on a deceptively simple, even homely note: a middle-aged woman having her hair cut; a mother trying to work at home while she waits for the doctor to check her son's chicken pox; and a woman meeting a colleague for lunch at the Chinese restaurant she regularly patronizes. But it is soon clear that darker forces are at work here. In ``Medusa's Ankles,'' the woman about to have her hair cut recalls how she had first visited the salon because it had a copy of Matisse's Rosy Nude in the window. The decor has recently changed, the Nude is gone, and the narrator wants an especially flattering haircut for an upcoming television appearance. But the stylist is distracted: He must choose between his girlfriend and his wife, who, he says, has ``let her ankles get fat.'' The comment, which evokes painful memories of the woman's lost youth and beauty, leads her to an uncharacteristic but cathartic outburst. In ``Art Work,'' suggested by Le Silence habité des maisons, Debbie, a harassed working mother, relies heavily on her eccentric housekeeper, Mrs. Brown. Meanwhile, her self-absorbed husband, a failed artist who works at home, can't abide Mrs. Brown, but the housekeeper reveals a surprising talent. Finally, in ``The Chinese Lobster,'' a troubled art student's charge of sexual assault leads two lonely academics to critique Matisse's attitudes toward women and art as they lunch, revealing in the process the frightening emptiness of their own lives, symbolized by the haunting image ``of a white room with no doors or windows.'' Like all good art, these paintings of the human heart linger in the mind's eye. Byatt at her accessible--if rather brief--best.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

A.S. Byatt was born on August 24, 1936 in Sheffield, England. She received a B.A. from Newnham College, Cambridge in 1957, did graduate study at Bryn Mawr College from 1957-58, and attended Somerville College, Oxford from 1958-59. She was a staff member in the extra-mural department at the University of London from 1962-71. From 1968-69, she was also a part-time lecturer in the liberal studies department of the Central School of Art and Design, London. She was a lecturer at University College from 1972-80 and then senior lecturer from 1981-83.

She became a full-time writer in 1983. Her works include The Biographer's Tale, The Virgin in the Garden, Babel Tower, A Whistling Woman, and The Children's Book. She also wrote numerous collections of short stories including Sugar and Other Stories, The Matisse Stories, The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye, Elementals, and Little Black Book of Stories. Byatt received the English Speaking Union fellowship in 1957-58, the Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1983, the Silver Pen Award for Still Life, and the Booker Prize for Possession: A Romance in 1990.

(Bowker Author Biography)