The Little Black Book of Stories [Paperback]

There is an axiom that states "Don't judge a book by its cover." In this case, the black fading into charcoal gray dust jacket (with a flowering golden sprig) is a precursor of things to come. The stories are dark, somber and brilliant. Who else could construct a series of stories where grief, anger and abuse are manifested in such creative, innovative and bizarre ways?

A woman loses her mother. The relationship, while lightly touched upon, was probably an inseparable one (the daughter states, "She was the flesh of my flesh. I was the flesh of her flesh.") Post the mother's death, her daughter begins to turn to stone but not just any stone; she begins layer by layer to manifest the various exotic stones found in Iceland. They are veined, with complex glints of underlying colors and multiple hues.

Then there is an Icelandic sculptor who goes to enormous difficulty to bring her rigid, statue-like self back to the land of his ancestors. Was this all a metaphor for a woman who was experiencing grief? An unmarried woman, the reader might conjecture, who was faced with an enormous personal transformation without her mother? One who needed a sculptor to introduce her to the real and essential self whom she had not previously recognized?

The bizarre journey proceeds as the reader meets the members of a writing class, experiences the rich memories of its oldest class member, as she describes everyday life when running a household was much more labor intensive. There was the cast iron stove to be kept highly polished on a daily basis, the laundry that was to be boiled, stirred and immersed into multiple rinses. Then came the laborious ironing! The woman's writings depicted a gentle, hardworking woman, and an anachronism to other class members who tore her writings apart because of their being perceived as commonplace. Who is she really? The writing class teacher later discovers part of her mystery...much to his horror!

A pink ribbon is the only adornment of a woman whose very self is being lost to dementia. Through a "tarted up" ghost, the reader discovers her in retrospect. To say more is to spoil!

Byatt is a genius! The stories might seem just that ... short stories. It's the pondering and opportunities for analysis that the stories invite. There exist many possibilities for each of the characters, their lives, their challenges, their joys and obstacles. Byatt layers her challenges to the reader. On the surface, what were the stories about? But beneath the layers, what were the stories really about?

To write like this, to really write like this, what power! These stories take hold of the mind like the great myths of the past. The sentences are crisp and clean, and simple in the way the best of all great writing is simple, with a simplicity that stirs to life the deep complexities of the subconscious. If I could write like this I would die happy.

This is my first foray into Ms. Byatt's work and I wanted something in short doses that I could read on the train on my way to work. However, I was also a bit disappointed. Her prose style is spare and austere and interesting for that reason. I must admit, I liked her writing style, which is probably the only thing about her stories that accounts for the adjective "eerie" in so many of the descriptions of these stories. But I must agree that further description of these stories as horror or "dark" is not so. They are contemplative and moody and occasionally thought-provoking, but not so much that I felt grabbed or hooked or even very much-compelled to keep turning the pages. And please do not dismiss my remarks as coming from someone who does not appreciate fine literature when she sees it. While I can't speak for others who did not like the book, for myself, I count The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, Les Miserables, Jane Eyre, Austen's works, Dicken's works, and others among my favorites, in addition to works by more modern and less 'classic' writers such as Douglas Coupland, Chuck Pahluniuk and Tom Robbins. If I were to put my finger on it, the stories attempt to conjure a depth of plot and of character that simply isn't there when all is said and done, and instead leaves you with a sense that it's all just a touch overly maudlin/melodramatically sappy to be taken seriously as a worthwhile read. Not for the reader interested in genuinely intellectually and/or emotionally stimulating reading.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 18 reviews  3.8 out of 5 stars