I should say up front that AS Byatt's novel, Possession, is my all time favourite read, so other books inevitably pale in comparison for me - including A Whistling Woman.

I strongly recommend *not* reading this book without first reading the others in the series. It's been a long while since I read the earlier instalments, and I found myself struggling to remember details from the earlier novels that are mentioned only in passing in A Whistling Woman.

It is a refreshing pleasure to read the work of an intelligent author who credits her audience with intelligence, but I found reading A Whistling Woman a bit too much like hard work at times. I'm not intimate with the philosophy of Wittgenstein, or the psychological theories of Jung and Freud; I don't know what a Fibonacci spiral is, and I've never read Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. Byatt made me pay for my ignorance with tantalising but insubstantial references, which left me floundering at times.

As for Byatt's treatment of her heroine, Frederica Potter ... well, please madam, I want more! We are granted glimpses into Frederica's life and mind, but are left (on the last page!) with this most "thinking" of women facing a future where she hasn't the "slightest idea what to do".

I do admire Byatt's restraint in ending this series with a declaration by one of her characters that "We shall think of something". Too often, in my opinion, great novels are resolved to death, and leave a reader feeling flat, with nothing left to imagine ... but, Antonia, what did you stop *there* for?

I did chuckle when I re-read the first chapter and re-discovered Frederica discussing this very issue (ie, books' ends). She asks the rhetorical question "What's a real end?", and concludes that "The end is always the most unreal bit..."

In summing up, I can't imagine any fan of Byatt's being disappointed with A Whistling Woman. On the other hand, I can't imagine anyone who's not a fan of Byatt finding this book terribly rewarding - my advice to non-fans is to read the first in the series (The Virgin in the Garden) immediately!

While reading A Whistling Woman, I kept wishing that more novelists wrote as well, as wonderfully, as A.S. Byatt. A Whistling Woman is a terrific novel, in my opinion almost as good as her phenomenal Possession. The story of Frederica Potter comes to a close (at least for us readers) at the end of the novel, and what a story it is--not for plotting reasons, but for how it is told. A Whistling Woman is an intelligently written, thoughtful and thought provoking novel of ideas focusing on one woman, Frederica, and a number of others who touch her life. Byatt shifts back and forth between plot lines and characters in a manner similar to Iris Murdoch. Like Murdoch, Byatt draws heavily from philisophical learning. All of the characters are highly intelligent and not afraid to show it. This is a wonderful, wonderful novel--one of the best I have read in quite some time. Enjoy!

This book is so much bigger than the pages it encompasses. Yes, it has a weak narrative arc compared with more popular fiction but the layers of metaphor and meaning enrich the story while the ending leaves all things possible. One word defines the core of this book. A word I had not heard before and one I looked up in the dictionary - Syzygy. This word means both "opposition" and "conjunction," and this is what this novel is all about. Opposite schools of thought and scholarly disciplines are seen to be in conjunction when discussed on Fredrica's TV show, the anti-university tries to be opposite to the real university but remains in conjunction in a weird way - it cannot survive as an anti-university without a university, the Ottaker Twins are in a strange syzygy dance throughout the novel and end up scarred by the same experience. Apart from this idea of conjunction and opposition, which I guess defined a lot of the sixties, there are many other wonderful literary games in the book. Fredrica's search for the meaning of metaphor plays a small but important part in our understanding of the whole while Bill Potter's epiphany about art is a fascinating place for this curmudgeon character to end up at. Philosophy is pitted against psychology, science against symbolism and love against destruction and everything ends up being linked at the end of the day. This is my favorite of the Fredrica books as I believe that A.S. Byatt has achieved more clarity here than ever before - or maybe I'm just getting it better!

First, can I say this? When I read the quote on the cover by David Bowie I laughed for at least 5 minutes on and off thinking how on this earth did such a quote find its way into this book. I'm not a big fan of contemporary art and the selections in this book were at times difficult to view with an open mind.

Here is what he said:

"Possibly the most infuriating art publication to come out of Britian. It's a pleasure to write for it, whatever the ___ it is." -David Bowie

I agree.

I see more confusion and lack of talent in this book than in anything I have ever seen before in my life. I mean, I have at least three other art books I would much rather look at. Yet, still I was interested to know what all the fuss was about.

I mean, for one thing: "How is hanging a vacuum up on the wall of an art show room, art?" Heck, I can do that here at home, no problem. There are worse examples I won't even mention here.

Most of the art is just too bizarre to say the least. I started to feel almost sick thinking about what must go on in the minds of some of the artists. This represents the worst of our world. There is no beauty here.

Ugly Art, move on
.....nothing to see here.

Puzzled by modern art? Bored by art criticism? Then "Writers On Artists" is the book for you. This unique collection of modern art works accompanied by essays by contemporary writers is a colorful feast for the eyes in every way.

Just as each writer may take a distinctly different view of modern art, every contributor is sincere in bringing modern art to the many who find it remote or incomprehensible.

With 350 full-color reproductions as well as portraits of the artists and writers this stimulating and challenging volume provokes discussion just as it provides entertainment. Reading Will Self's take on outre Damien Hirst makes art fun.

Author Howard Jacobson takes on Andy Warhol, and Germain Greer extols the virtues of Portugese artist Paula Rego. Noted British author Julian Barnes finds challenges and implicit questions in the paintings of Edgar Degas.

And so it goes in "Writers On Artists," a fantastic journey through the works of artists guided by the writers' pens.

- Gail Cooke

This is a brilliant insight into the wonderful world of art by the a number of great writers. From the excellently edited magazine, Modern Painters, this book takes "the best bits," displayed beautifully with exquisite pictures. a MUST for anyone this Christmas.

I love A.S. Byatt's style- dense, literary, yet down-to-earth in may ways. The Potter family is portrayed carefully, with a look at the quirks and dynamics of a family. I like Frederica, despite realizing she is not very sympathetic. My only issue with the book is that there are some moments of indescribable bordom when reading about the Potter boy. He is troubled and sometimes the scenes of him trying to discover comfort in the world read as hilarious, but often as not they made me want to snooze. However, I still want to learn More about this family, so the author did almost everything else right!

I have read The Virgin in the Garden and Still Life, its sequal, twice. The first time I was predominantly aware of the lushness of Byatt's language, which is something I notice when I first read all of her books. For me it almost impedes my ability to understand and follow the plot. The second reading for me was much more satisfying. I really like the Potter family, with all of their eccentricity and irrascibility.

The is the beginning of a very satisfying, sometimes very sad, series of books. They are worth the sometimes slow reading required.

"The Virgin in the Garden" is a densely written novel that centers around a quirky English family during the time of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation. The book deals with themes found in Byatt's other novels: lives of intellectuals and artists, the occult and spiritual, suffocating atmosphere of an academic village, gender dynamics and familial relationships. Byatt's characters rattle off quotes and allusions in just about every scene, but she rescues them from being mere voices of ideas by exposing their human weakness and imperfection. The portrait of the core family, besieged with problems, is utterly convincing. But she does this slowly, and the first of this three-part novel, filled with considerable background information, plods with lethargy. The ponderous pace is compounded by Byatt's habit of depicting scenes in minute details. Her power of observation is admirable, but the minutiae ultimately obscure the dramatic thread. Something must also be said about the novel's point of view: the change of focus character from chapter to chapter works well, but when this change occurs within a chapter, and often within a same paragraph, the effect can be disorienting.

Despite these flaws, riveting drama awaits those who are patient; the second half of the novel is deeply engrossing. The narrative pulse quickens, tension explodes, and in a few memorable scenes, fine dialogue alone propels the story forward with breathless inevitability--quite rare for Byatt, and quite entertaining for readers.

There is little movement in this exploration of a mid level suburban English family. Admittedly, there are passages of remarkable insight, but enormous amounts of time are devoted to the author's obsessions with parturition, infant development,
pale sexuality, and show-offy displays of her academic credentials in literature. I kept hoping for some original thoughts and theories of human behavior, but was disappointed and bored. Much of this material has been explored before and with greater skill and intelligence.

As I moved from page to page it reminded me of slogging through the swamps of Mississippi, on bivouac, back in 1945. It was something that had to be done, but I wondered why.

This is a breathtaking novel. I was not that enthusiatic about The Virgin in te Garden but this book was amazing on every level. I love the development of these characters (who seem very real, very Known to me). Frederica is especially well developed. Her intelligence and lack of self-knowledge are an endearing package. I personally love the intricate explanations of ideas- it is refreshing to read about things that I think about and yet have never found elsewhere. My only real probelm with the book is that the author's voice intrudes too much; it isn't necessary to me to be AWARE of the fact that this is a novel. Byatt almost wants us to be aware that this is fiction when I would always rather be in that pleasant state of believing in the fiction. But overall, I couldn't put this book down; what happens at the end is shockingly sad. I wonder what book 3 in the series will bring.

Byatt's use of words, language, create beautiful mental images. I've never run across an author who is able to "paint" with words. I didn't like Frederica Potter, introduced in the first novel of Byatt's four-book series, A Virgin In The Garden. I didn't sympathize with her. I didn't understand her cold, passionate, intellectual personality. By the end of Still Life, I desperately cared for her. The third book, Babel Tower, disturbs me. That's a different review. Still Life is superior to A Virgin In The Garden. I couldn't put it down. If you're a Byatt fan, don't miss these novels. The seem to be more unwieldly than Possession, but Byatt's genius is all there.

Elementals. A S Byatt. Chatto and Windus. £12 (UK)

Subtitled 'Stories of Fire and Ice', A S Byatt's latest collection are works of sensuous indulgence. Occasionally her story-telling gifts are overwhelmed by the detail of her sensory observations, yet most readers will forgive this and allow themselves to be carried away by her mission to winkle out the truth of a subject through finding exactly the right words. In a similar way, the artist in 'A Lamia in the Cevennes' becomes obsessed with capturing the exact blue of his swimming pool. The challenge makes him happy, 'in one of the ways in which human beings are happy.'

In Crocodile Tears, Patricia has lost this ability to be happy. She notes her surroundings, the heat and history of Nimes, with sublime indifference. This opening story gets off to a flying start. Having argued with her husband as to whether a painting in a London art gallery is banal or not, Patricia rounds the stairs to see him lying dead at the bottom, surrounded by concerned couriers and paramedics. Hearing them pronounce him dead, she walks straight past, gets a train to Paris then south, eventually ending up at Nimes. A fellow guest in the hotel she has picked at random tries to bring her out of her grief: "You may sit there, glass-eyed while things slip past...crocodile fountains, the stones of this city. Or you may look with curiosity and live."

The same message is given in the final story: 'Christ in the House of Martha and Mary'. An artist paints fish and eggs in a kitchen where the cook bemoans her fate. The artist tells her, "the divide is not between the servants and the served, between the leisured and the workers, but between those who are interested in the world and its multiplicity of forms and forces, and those who merely subsist, worrying or yawning."

Byatt paints beautiful word pictures for the reader to admire. In 'Cold' she builds them out of snow and ice and intricate glass palaces. In Jael she takes us into a posh girl's school where a pupil colours in a biblical picture with a bright red crayon. From here she recreates every nuance of the atmosphere of the school: "whenever I remember that patch of fierce colour I remember, like an after-image, a kind of dreadful murky colour, a yellow-khaki-mustard-thick colour, that is the colour of the days of our boredom."

The lyricism of the collection is balanced by a sharp, sometimes surreal, wit, as when the Lamia (half woman half snake) appears in the artist's pool and tries to seduce him, finally making do with his friend. In 'Baglady' a well-to-do wife accompanying her husband on a business trip to the Far East finds herself lost and penniless in the nightmarish Good Fortune Shopping Mall. A policeman moves her on with a stick. Throughout the book, fairytale and mythical elements combine with insights into modern life. This is a collection to be savoured slowly.

Thomas Merton once wrote: "Art enables us to find ourselves and to lose ourselves at the same time. The mind that responds to the intellectual or spiritual values that lie hidden in a poem, a painting, or a piece of music, discovers a spiritual vitality. This vitality lifts the mind above itself, and makes it present on a level of being that it did not know it could ever achieve."

There is a great spiritual vitality in A.S. Byatt's "Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice." From the first story of this collection to the last...these stories forcibly pull the reader out of the ordinary and into the wonder of life. This little book packs a wallop. Each of the stories are little masterpieces.

The first story, "Crocodile tears is a journey of self-discovery through the reawakening of a woman's curiosity. In the second story the reader looks into the life of an artist obsessed with his art. My favorite piece is the fairy tale "cold." "Baglady" is one heck of a scary story. "Jael'' is a glimpse into the soul of a woman unwilling to admit that she is haunted by her past. The final tale is a masterpiece that demonstrates how the way we see the world affects the way we live in it.

In the King James version of the Bible (which Byatt seems to have a love/hate relationship with) Paul says: "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known" (1 Corinthians 13:12). These stories, as with all of Byatt's work, contain stunning visual imagery. One cannot read these tales and still view the everyday world through the same eyes.

If you find yourself with a chance to do some "summer reading" anytime soon, let me encourage you to start here with this book. I recommend it highly.

Byatt's collection of sumptuous stories reminded me of Banana Yoshimoto, Emma Donoghue, and Jeanette Winterson. These tales seem like modern faerie tales without the classic imagery. Or rather, with the classic imagery shifted. In "Cold", an ice princess discovers true love in a desert land. In my favorite in the collection, "Christ in the House of Martha and Mary", a cook finds the meaning of art in life. These tales of extremes of emotions, temperatures, lives are full of joy and life, and make many a reader celebrate. This will certainly not be the last book by Byatt I'll read.

I think this was probably a bad book to pick. I liked how she was descriptive, but sometimes I didn't see how the pieces of Matisse's work connected with the story. The first two stories were the best, but I found the third one to just be boring and depressing.

A.S. Byatt is a spectacular writer, and her novels are some of the best English writing in the 20th century. And as pieces of literature, these stories are good, rich and coherent.

But when she talks about art, she is way out of her depth.

Truth to tell, out of the three stories in this collection, two are good. In the second one, though, she gets technical. This story deals with the mechanics of making art and the workings of the art world, and she just does not know her material. She talks about fine points of color theory and she gets it so wrong that her descriptions are just goofy. It's not like she describes an off-beat approach to color; she uses technical terms like "complimentary colors" without really understanding what they mean.

In the second and third stories she second-guesses art politics but really she has no idea what the prejudices and rules are in the art world, or how galleries really function, or the relationship between the demographics of the collectors and what a dealer will show. She talks about academic art politics and makes the mistaken assumption that academia values representational competance over modernism and the avant garde.

I love A.S. Byatt and will read anything she has written, but she shouldn't write about art. She hasn't done enough research.

Matisse paintings are more or less the inspiration for this short but insightful collection of stories. A.S. Byatt has done a wonderful job of incorporating insight and art into three compelling short stories. In "Medusa's Ankles" a middle-aged woman in a beauty salon reflects on her life and appearance while searching for a look that will allow her to recapture a small piece of her youth. "Art Work" is an insightful look into the lives of three different people and their personalities. We learn about a kind hearted and open minded woman, her stodgy and fussy husband and their frumpy but dignified housekeeper. Finally in "The Chinese Lobster" we are treated to an elaborate Chinese lunch where we hear two professors discuss Matisse's nude paintings while at the same time expounding the troubles of a suicidal student suffering from anorexia. A.S. Byatt does a wonderful job of capturing the feelings of self-loathing, insecurity and frustration to create a rich work of literary fiction. The stories are very atmospheric and filled with vivid imagery. This is a good introduction to the talents of A.S. Byatt.

In agreement with what other reviewers have said, I enjoyed The Quest for Corvo primarily because of the ways the book displays the author's quaint but intense enthusiasm for his subject. This is, to me, the most interesting aspect of the biography, for the most defining (and perhaps most important) thing about Fr. Rolfe was not his literary exploits (relatively few, mostly unnoticed) or indeed anything he ever accomplished, but rather his eccentricity of character. And Symons' enthusiasm for Rolfe's eccentricity is infectious, and it lends not only authenticity but genuine merit to his choice to structure the book as a "quest" instead of as hagiography.

Nonetheless, despite his intrinsically fascinating character, Rolfe should be approached first through Hadrian the Seventh, and not directly through The Quest for Corvo--if only because then the reader will be following in the biographer's footsteps.

As for the content of the biography, I found its wayward structure refreshing, but confusing, especially with regard to the author's depictions and analyses of Rolfe's literary output. A bibliography or chronology would have been quite helpful. Also, echoing other reviewers, Symons's reluctance to speak at length about Rolfe's homosexuality (especially the elements that might still be considered deviant today) leaves too much of Rolfe's character and contemporary reactions to him concealed.

One summer afternoon in 1925, A. J. A. Symons and Christopher Millard, each somewhat obscure and eccentric literary figures in their own right, were sitting in a garden discussing books and authors that had never received proper recognition from the arbiters of literary history. Millard asked Symons whether he had ever read "Hadrian the Seventh." Symons acknowledged that he had not and that he was unfamiliar with the book. "To my surprise, [Millard] offered to lend me his copy-to my surprise, for my companion lent his books seldom and reluctantly. But knowing the range of his knowledge of out-of-the-way literature, I accepted without hesitating; and by doing so took the first step on a trail that led into very strange places."

Very strange places indeed! Symons began reading "Hadrian the Seventh," a book written by Frederick Rolfe, also known as Baron Corvo, and originally published in 1904, and quickly felt "that interior stir with which we all recognize a transforming new experience." Symons went on to spend the next eight years of his life tracking down the details of the life and writings of Baron Corvo, one of the most eccentric, original and enigmatic English writers of the last one hundred years. The result was "The Quest for Corvo: An Experimental Biography," a fascinating book that has been in- and out-of-print since its first publication in 1934 and has enjoyed a literary cult following akin to that of the text ("Hadrian the Seventh") and the author (Rolfe, aka Corvo) that originally inspired it.

As one reads "The Quest for Corvo," it seems that Symon's text represents the outermost of three concentric circles of eccentricity.

The innermost, core circle is "Hadrian the Seventh," a strange and imaginative novel that tells the story of an impoverished, eccentric and seemingly paranoid writer and devotee of the Roman Catholic faith, George Arthur Rose. Rose, a brilliant, self-taught man whose candidacy for the priesthood had been rejected twenty years earlier, is unexpectedly approached one day by a Cardinal and a Bishop who have been made aware of his devotion and his shameful treatment by the Church. Rose is ordained and ultimately becomes the first English Pope in several hundred years. While a work of fiction, Symons' biographical investigations disclose that much of the story of "Hadrian the Seventh" closely parallels the life of its strange author, Frederick Rolfe.

The second circle of eccentricity is, of course, the life of Frederick Rolfe, Baron Corvo, himself. It is the telling of this life that occupies Symons in "The Quest for Corvo," and the result is a fascinating, if perhaps not always historically accurate, detective story cum biography. Starting with his obsessive search for information on Rolfe and his meetings and correspondence with those who knew him, Symons brilliantly recreates a life-the life of a strangely talented artist, photographer, historian, and writer who led a life of seemingly paranoid desperation, ultimately dying impoverished in Venice at the age of forty-five.

The third, outermost circle is the eccentricity of the author of the "Quest for Corvo," A. J. A. Symons, a founder of The Wine and Food Society of England, a collector of music boxes, and a master at card tricks and the art of forgery. Like Corvo himself, Symons died at an early age-he was only forty years old-and his life and his book is seemingly as eccentric as its subject.

"The Quest for Corvo" is one of those little gems that deserve a cherished, if perhaps minor, place in English literature and the literature of biography. Happily, it is back in print again, courtesy of New York Review Books. Read it, and then read "Hadrian the Fourth" (also brought back into print by NYRB) for a fascinating turn in the world of the imaginative and the eccentric.

In recent years we've been treated to many thoughtful and highly readable studies on the nature of biography itself, such as in Richard Holmes's FOOTSTEPS and Janet Malcolm's THE SILENT WOMAN. Symons's THE QUEST FOR CORVO could almost be a sketch for these later, deeper studies in its very metatextual approach to what it means to compose a biography of Frederick Rolfe, one of the strangest figures in fin-de-siecle British letters. Although later biographies took this work to task for its errors and omissions, that shouldn't dissuade you from enjoying how Symons juxtaposes differing perspectives on the quarrelsome and paranoid Rolfe's actions and behaviors, and his desire to get at the "real man." Greater drawbacks, I think, might be Symons's homophobia--which, while very common for its time, seems a bit hysterical today--and the fact that Rolfe (or "Baron Corvo," as he liked to style himself) as a person either enchants readers completely or eventually becomes as tiresome to them as he did to his contemporaries. Still, even though Rolfe's antics do grate on some people's nerves a bit after a while(as they did mine), the fascination of his personality remains quite compelling.

This edition features a beautiful cover and paper stock (as do all NYRB editions) and an intelligent and thoughtful introduction (which, unfortunately, they do not always).

Victor Schrager's images are gorgeous - every single one is a masterpiece - lovely, endlessly fascinating, wonderfully rich and complex and brilliantly intelligent in conception and execution.
The superb photography is accompanied by the delightful text of A.S. Byatt. For anyone who loves photography, birds, nature, art or literature, this is the perfect book. It will charm and delight you forever.

This book is stunning in every sense. A beautiful collection of bird photographs, interesting & insightful essay, with classic yet modern design marrying the two. This book clearly illustrates the delicate interaction between man and nature. I think this book should appeal to many different individuals-- fans of Schrager's work, fans of Byatt's work, those interested in photography, as well as the birding population in general. I loved it!

These pictures are a fresh look at the interplay between Nature and Culture - the photographs are beautiful, the text rich and entertaining, and the fusion between the two is great. One of the nicest photography books in a long time.

_Wonder Tales_ is a small and expensive collection of French courtly fairy tales, most written by upper-class women. Their themes seem frivolous now, but the stories were actually quite subversive for their time; in them, the authors promoted female autonomy, true love, and marriage by choice rather than by arrangement. (The authors themselves often were the victims of terrible arranged marriages. In these stories they dream of a better world.)

The stories are not the succinct tales we are used to; they can be byzantine and winding. Just when you think it's time for "happily ever after", in comes another twist. But the tales are for the most part both funny and romantic, and I enjoyed them.

This might even be considered essential reading, if you're reading _From the Beast to the Blonde_. As I read Warner's scholarly study, I kept wishing I had access to the obscure stories she was constantly quoting. When I found this, it helped a great deal; I only wish _Wonder Tales_was sold in paperback as a companion volume to Beast/Blonde.

As one of the editorial reviewers comments, this book is intended for gift-giving. It is a charming, diminutive hardcover containing six French fairy tales from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, translated by some prestigious modern writers and translators, with an introduction, biographical notes, and bibliography by Marina Warner. These tales (and those in future volumes which Warner says she hopes to bring out) are especially interesting to read after Warner's From the Beast to the Blonde, which examines the French salon society and its members (mostly women) who used the writing of these tales as a form of social protest as well as entertainment and even escape. But three of these six tales, as well as a number of others from the same milieu, appear in translations by Jack Zipes in his inexpensive paperback "Beauty and the Beast and Other Classic French Fairy Tales." If you are interested in a broad selection of these tales, including some famous ones like "Little Red Riding Hood" and "The Sleeping Beauty" (complete with Perrault's violent episodes that are often left out in children's versions), Zipes is a good choice. The texts are there, along with some scholarly introductions and biographies of the authors of the tales in a mass-market format.

Warner's book is more aesthetically pleasing. Its elegant, whimsical design and first-class literary translations invite the reader to escape into stories that are part magical fantasy and part social commentary. These tales are longer than the usual children's fairy stories, and they tend to have more elaborate adventures and quite worldly descriptions of clothing, decoration, and other amenities of aristocratic life. Most of the plots resolve themselves through the intervention of fairies, whose actions may seem unmotivated (deciding not to help a heroine on one page and then suddenly turning up to save her from being eaten by an ogre a couple pages later). I personally find this easier to take in this charming little hardcover than in the no-nonsense mass-market format of the Zipes collection.

Warner's book is also significant in that, in addition to the three tales that overlap with Zipes, it contains some genuine rarities in the genre. According to Warner's introduction, two of the six Wonder Tales, "Bearskin" and "Starlite", have never been translated into English before, and Charles Perrault's tale, "The Counterfeit Marquise," has never been included in previous Perrault collections (perhaps because, having no supernatural characters, and taking cross-dressing as its theme, it would not be considered appropriate for the juvenile audience that these collections have historically targeted).

Regarding the translations themselves, I compared at random some paragraphs in the stories that appear in both books. The quality of the prose is not miles apart, since both books strive for accuracy in translation. Nevertheless, if you admire the writing of John Ashbery, Gilbert Adair, Terence Cave, Ranjit Bolt, and/or A. S. Byatt, that could be another reason to choose this book.

I loved this book but I really think you have to have read Byatt's Booker Prize winning novel, "Possession," in order to best understand and relate to the stories in "The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye."

In "Possession," Byatt created two wonderful Victorian characters, Randolphe Ash and Christabel La Motte, both writers. Two of the fairy tales contained in this collection of Byatt originals, "The Glass Coffin," and "Gode's Story," are the work of "Ash" and "La Motte." This is not to say that a reader will not enjoy them if he or she has not read "Possession." It only means that he will not derive the maxiumum amount of enjoyment from the stories.

The other two stories, "The Story of the Eldest Princess" and "Dragons' Breath," as well as the title novella, are meditations on the art of storytelling and all are very good. "The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye," in particular, is excellent. The only thing I didn't like about some of these stories, "The Story of the Eldest Princess," especially, is the thread of feminisim that runs through them. But, on further reflection, I suppose that is typical of all fairy tales, to some extent.

"The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye," tells the tale of a modern day storyteller who loves to meditate on the tales of Scheherazade. It is a rather pessimistic tale, from some standpoints, though not entirely, and the storyteller is a very clever one. She proves this cleverness when she winds up with a djinn of her very own.

Byatt's characters never seem to be black or white; instead, they are simply people with very differing views on life and the choices that should be made. The characters in this book are no different and that is one of things that makes them so charming and believable.

These aren't the typical "happily ever after" fairy tales of your childhood. They are, rather, meditations and reflections instead. But they are meditations and reflections that do contain more than a bit of magic. If you like your fairy tales told with a modern touch and if you prefer them on the esoteric side, this might be a book you'll really enjoy.

I was nurtured by my mom on myth, folk tale, and fairy stories as a child, so it was a delight for me to read "The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye." A.S. Byatt led me down ancient winding streets in exotic places to bring me to myself. This is the goal of all successful fairy tales and this modern fairy story accomplishes that goal.

The protagonist, Gillian Perholt, is a modern woman, and that is what gives this tale its "life spark" and makes the concept of writing a fairy tale work so well. The other four stories echo the formula of all past fairy tales, and so they seem stilted and lifeless. "Once upon a time," the trademark of tales, worked in the past because it added a sense of timelessness to the story. But we need to remember that when the original tales were told, the lifestyle that was being described was a lifestyle that everyone could still basically identify with. This made the stories timeless and relevent. As children, we were only aware of the magic and adventure of these old stories and sometimes the shadows of the story's message, but as adults we need a fairy tale to have a sense of immediacy and timelessness, as indeed they did for people who heard them in the past. The old tales were meant for children and adults alike, and for a modern tale of the same genre, the same two conditions need to hold true.

Gillian is modern. She is middle aged, divorced and independent. She is bright, and conflicted about herself - taking pride in her intellect and scholarly accomplishments and having doubts about her disirability. There is also a continuous thread of anxiety about death that permeates Gillian's personality. All these factors, as well as descriptions of air flights and luxury hotels, gives the story its immediacy. Gillian travels the world to lecture in her specialty:"narrology." This means she is an expert on folk tales and legends from around the world and draws analogies between them to locate universal truths. Gillian has always had a great imagination, and at first, during her scholarly wanderings, we think it is this imagination and life's disappointments that play tricks with her mind. But when she is given "the Nightingale's Eye," (a beautiful old glass bottle)as a gift, we find ourselves in a full blown fairy tale with magic, wit, adventure, errotic pleasures, and intellectual games. Now we are willing to buy into Byatt's beautiful writing because it gratifies on all levels.

I've always found A.S. Byatt to be not only entertaining, but also educational. Reading her books is like attending an English lecture by a favorite professor. Suddenly you realize that three hours have gone by and you've been so engrossed that you didn't notice. A.S. Byatt is a wordsmith of the highest order. Her little volume of tales provides a feast for anyone who enjoys the vagaries of the English language. Who wouldn't want to be a "narratologist", like the main character in the title story? I love that word....wish I'd coined it myself! The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye, a collection of adult fairy tales, provides a delightful juxtoposition of fantasy and reality, present and past. Things are not what they seem. But of course, if you know anything about fairy folk, you already know this to be true. It's a real treat to find fairy tales that capture the shifting, mercurial nature of "the little people." If you think you're too old for fairy tales, read a few from Byatt's book. Just remember to keep your wits about you lest the author catch you unawares, blissfully expecting a "happily ever after" that never arrives.