Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice (Vintage International) - Softcover

Byatt, A S

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375705759 ISBN 13: 9780375705755

Publisher: Vintage, 2000

Synopsis

From the booker Prize-winning author of Possession comes this richly imaginitive story collection that transports the reader to a world where opposites--passion and loneliness, betrayal and loyalty, fire and ice--clash and converge.

A beautiful ice maiden risks her life when she falls in love with a desert prince, whose passionate touches scorch her delicate skin. A woman flees the scene of her husband's heart attack, leaving her entire past behind her. Striving to master color and line, a painter discovers the resolution to his artisitc problems when a beautiful and magical water snake appears in his pool. And a wealthy Englishwoman gradually loses her identity while wandering through a shopping mall. Elegantly crafter and suffused with boundless wisdom, these bewitching tales are a testament to a writer at the hieght of her powers.

About this title

Review:

Byatt's stories simmer with a sensuality and passion which, like topiarian trees in a formal garden, are pruned and trained into cultivated shapes whilst retaining the wild scent of the orchard. In "Crocodile Tears" a woman walks away from a personal tragedy, deserting those she loves to try and reconcile herself to a death for which she feels horribly responsible. Thrown together in Nīmes with another exiled mourner, a Norwegian full of northern folktales, she ricochets between a numbed calm and a reckless urge for self-destruction. Together they begin to assemble some kind of personal solace out of fragments of European history, fiction and myth, and so come to terms with their guilt. "A Lamia in the Cevennes" is also set in France, where another isolated English exile struggles for self-knowledge amid the shards of history and folktale. "Cold" is itself a kind of latter-day fairy story of ice princesses and sighing suitors. These are stories steeped in light and colour, full of glowing landscapes and sensuous delights. Their intricately woven skeins of literary allusion and keenly observed locations bewitch the reader. Yet the figures in Byatt's landscapes seem powerless to derive pleasure or solace from their surroundings, picking their lonely way through the brilliance, carrying with them burdens of painful memories they cannot shake off. --Lisa Jardine

Review:

"Fired by a fierce intelligence and related in shimmering prose. This eclectic little volume should delight A. S. Byatt's devoted readers and attract many new ones." -The New York Times

"A stunning display.... Elementals combines finely wrought stories with imagery as sparkling as jewels. It is a work that should not be missed." -The Denver Post

"A wonderful book-complex, amusing, clever, and thought-provoking--a reader's dream." -The Plain Dealer

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0375705759
• ISBN 13: 9780375705755
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240