Vintage Byatt

Zusatztext “Byatt is a gifted observer! able to discern the exact details that bring whole worlds into being.” -- The New York Times Informationen zum Autor A. S. Byatt  was the author of numerous novels, including  The Children’s Book, The Biographer’s Tale,  and  Possession,  which was awarded the Booker Prize. She also wrote two novellas, published together as  Angels & Insects,  five collections of short stories, and several works of nonfiction. A distinguished critic and author, and the recipient of the 2016 Erasmus Prize for her “inspiring contribution to ‘life writing,’” she died in 2023. Klappentext Fabulist! realist! critic! and winner of the Booker Prize for her now-classic novel Possession ! A. S. Byatt has boundless intellectual and literary gifts and a fathomless imagination on which to nourish them. Her novels! stories! and essays allow us to see both our own and other worlds and times and! perhaps most brilliantly! the connections between them. Vintage Byatt includes a self-contained section from the bestselling Possession ; selections from the Matisse Stories ! Elementals ! Sugar and Other Stories ! and the recent Little Black Book of Stories ; and essays from the collection Passions of the Mind . Vintage Readers are a perfect introduction to some of the great modern writers! presented in attractive! affordable paperback editions. RACINE AND THE TABLECLOTH When was it clear that Martha Crichton-Walker was the antagonist? Emily found this word for her much later, when she was a grown woman. How can a child, undersized and fearful, have enough of a self to recognize an antagonist? She might imagine the malice of a cruel stepmother or a jealous sister, but not the clash of principle, the essential denial of an antagonist. She was too young to have thought-out beliefs. It was Miss Crichton-Walker's task, after all, to form and guide the unformed personality of Emily Bray. Emily Bray's ideas might have been thought to have been imparted by Martha Crichton-Walker, and this was in part the case, which made the recognition of antagonism peculiarly difficult, certainly for Emily, possibly for both of them. The first time Emily saw Miss Crichton-Walker in action was the first evening of her time at the school. The class was gathered together, in firelight and lamplight, round Miss Crichton-Walker's hearth, in her private sitting-room. Emily was the only new girl: she had arrived in mid-year, in exceptional circumstances (a family illness). The class were thirteen years old. There were twenty-eight of them, twenty-nine with Emily, a fact whose significance had not yet struck Emily. The fireside evening was Miss Crichton-Walker's way of noticing the death of a girl who had been in the class last term and had been struck by peritonitis after an operation on a burst appendix. This girl had been called Jan but had been known to the other girls as Hodgie. Did you hear about Hodgie, they all said to each other, rushing in with the news, mixing a kind of fear with a kind of glee, an undinted assurance of their own perpetuity. This was unfortunate for Emily; she felt like a substitute for Hodgie, although she was not. Miss Crichton-Walker gave them all pale cocoa and sugar-topped buns, and told them to sit on the floor round her. She spoke gently about their friend Hodgie whom they must all remember as she had been, full of life, sharing everything, a happy girl. She knew they were shocked; if at any later time they were to wish to bring any anxieties or regrets to her, she would be glad to share them. Regrets was an odd word, Emily perhaps noticed, though at that stage she was already willing enough to share Martha Crichton-Walker's tacit assumption that the girls would be bound to have regrets. Thirteen-year-old girls are unkind and in g...

Product details

• Authors: A S Byatt, A. S. Byatt
• Publisher: Vintage USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 12.10.2004
• EAN: 9781400077458
• ISBN: 978-1-4000-7745-8
• No. of pages: 208
• Dimensions: 132 mm x 203 mm x 13 mm
• Series: Vintage International; Vintage International
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature