Fascination (TPB) (GRP) - Softcover

Boyd, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241143039 ISBN 13: 9780241143032

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton, 2004

Synopsis

This is William Boyd's third volume of short stories following his acclaimed collections On the Yankee Station (1981) and The Destiny of Nathalie X (1995). Described as "the finest storyteller of his generation", Boyd shows his mastery of the form as these stories range widely through time and space. In a brilliant array of styles and narratives we move from 1930s Germany to Los Angeles in the Second World War, from contemporary Oxford to 19th century Russia. Whether in London or Amsterdam. Eastbourne or a Normandy village these stories explore and expose the fraught, funny, absurd, poignant and lovelorn lives of their many and varied characters.

About this title

Review

"A masterwork. . . . [Boyd is] one of the finest authors of our time." --Forth Worth Star-Telegram

"Brilliant. . . . Burns with the kind of artistry that turns a piece of short fiction into a work of imagination that expands beyond the boundaries of the page. . . [Boyd's] breadth and depth and control are simply breathtaking." --San Francisco Chronicle

"Lovely. . . . Elegant. . . . [These stories] deal not simply with art vs. life but with the terrible demands that art makes upon the artist." --The Washington Post

"Deeply moving. . . . The insights arrived at in Boyd's stories are experienced rather than merely witnessed. They strike us deep, and they stick." --The Boston Globe

"The stories are perfect...Suffused with an understanding of love, desire, and emotional incompetence."
-M. John Harrison, the Guardian

"A virtuoso range of techniques, Boyd shows here just what he is capable of...The resonance and impact of past events on present lives, and a sense of yearning for love or completion, permeate these perfectly formed snapshots of life at its most mystifying."
-Ross Gilfillan, The Daily Mail

"Boyd's remarkable, and almost wholly consistent, gift is to convince us of the roundness, the existence of his characters from the very first sentence."
-Erica Wagner, The Times

"Short stories by William Boyd are an occasional treat...For those who enjoy what might loosely be called canapé fiction -- delicious little morsels that whet the appetite but never sate it -- Fascination is a must-read book. Every one of the 16 stories has the patina of craftsmanship...The writing transcends cleverness...An impressively sophisticated offering from a writer whose charms never wane.
-David Robson, The Sunday Telegraph

"Sly and consistently entertaining...Boyd uses the artistic methods of the cinematographer...but he twists them to his own ends...This collection demonstrates Boyd's versatility as well as his virtuosity. He is as much at home writing about nineteenth-century Vienna as he is twentieth century Cape Cod.
-Sebastian Shakespeare, Literary Review

About the Author

William Boyd was born in 1952 in Accra, Ghana and grew up there and in Nigeria. His first novel, A Good Man in Africa (1981), won the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Somerset Maugham Prize. His other novels include An Ice Cream War (1982, shortlisted for the 1982 Booker Prize and winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), Stars and Bars (1984), The New Confessions (1987), Brazzaville Beach (1990, winner of the McVitie Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize), The Blue Afternoon (1993, winner of the 1993 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award), Armadillo (1998), Any Human Heart (2002, winner of the Prix Jean Monnet) and Restless (2006, winner of the Costa Novel of the Year Award). His latest novel is Sweet Caress (2015). Some seventeen of his screenplays have been filmed, including The Trench (1999), which he also directed, and he is also the author of four collections of short stories: On the Yankee Station (1981), The Destiny of Nathalie 'X' (1995), Fascination (2004) and The Dream Lover (2008). He is married and divides his time between London and South West France.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0241143039
• ISBN 13: 9780241143032
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224