Product Description

These stories deal with betrayal and loyalty, quests and longings, and loneliness and passion. A scholar pursues an elusive biographer, stumbling upon buried fragments of distant lives. A woman walks out of her previous existence and encounters an ice-blond stranger from a secretive world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #150241 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 232 pages

Amazon.co.uk 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 Nîmes 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

Customer Reviews

A collection of six short stories
This collection of six short stories, from an acknowledged master, cannot fail to delight. From the beautifully observed 'Crocodile Tears' right through to 'Christ in the House of Martha and Mary' each story is a tale well told. Elementals, although the latest, may not be the strongest of A. S. Byatt's short story collections. But it is still beyond anything that other writers are producing in this genre. To see how each story is crafted and to note the mastery of the English language is, of itself, a delight. This whole collection explains why Byatt writes and why we do not.

Once Again, Byatt Leaves Me Cold
At the behest of friends who swear by her books, I periodically return to A.S. Byatt to try and get a glimpse of what it is they find so enchanting in her work. After the weighty Babel Tower and Possession, this small volume of six stories seemed to offer a more painless approach. Once again, however, I have to confess that her dense and elaborate style, crammed full of classical and biblical references comes off the page as rather over-thought and contrived to me.

The first story, about a woman who literally runs away from her husband's death left me utterly unmoved and cold. Another story about a reclusive painter who encounters a mythical creature in his swimming pool also left me with a "so-what" emptiness. Yes, Byatt can create these dense sentences dripping with description, but it's all underpinned by a sense of ennui that I find tiresome. The longest and most conventional of the stories is a fairy tale about a princess with ice maiden blood falls in love with a desert prince, and sacrifices her health to be with him. In that context, Byatt's elaborate prose works a bit better and isn't so off-putting. However, my favorite tale is of the wife of an English businessman who gets lost in a giant Asian shopping mall. It's a funny and grotesque absurdist piece, and the only one where Byatt's style doesn't take precedence over the storytelling.

In any event, this little volume will likely appeal to Byatt's fans and do little to endear her to those-like me-who don't care for her style.