'The Chinese Lobster', The Matisse Stories by A. S. Byatt 1993

admirers of "Possession," A. S. Byatt's award-winning "romance" about passionate poets and nosy scholars, need only open her slim new book, "The Matisse Stories," to find themselves in familiar territory. For despite the vast ...





The Matisse Stories Paperback – April 30, 1996


by A. S. Byatt (Author)



These three stories celebrate the eye even as they reveal its unexpected proximity to the heart. For if each of A.S. Byatt's narratives is in some way inspired by a painting of Henri Matisse, each is also about the intimate connection between seeing and feeling--about the ways in which a glance we meant to be casual may suddenly call forth the deepest reserves of our being. Beautifully written, intensely observed, The Matisse Stories is fiction of spellbinding authority.




"Full of delight and humor...The Matisse Stories is studded with brilliantly apt images and a fine sense for subtleties of conversation and emotion."--San Francisco Chronicle



From Library Journal


A best seller in England, where it was published in 1993, this beautifully illustrated volume contains three stories-each a sort of "still life" inspired by a particular Matisse painting-of seemingly ordinary women: a middle-aged teacher forced to play psychiatrist to her self-centered hairdresser; a cleaning woman with a passion for knitting; and a college dean discussing a case of sexual harassment with the accused over lunch in a Chinese restaurant. Byatt (Possession, LJ 11/1/90), who has been in the news lately for her principled stand against huge advances for literary fiction, is a consummate prose stylist, possessed of both perfect pitch for dialog and a painterly eye for the telling details that flesh out these characters and reveal their essential humanness. Highly recommended for fiction collections.

--David Sowd, formerly with Stark Cty. District Lib., Canton, Ohio

Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.













Paperback: 144 pages

Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (April 30, 1996)

Language: English










'The Matisse Stories' - AS Byatt - The Independent

www.independent.co.uk/.../book-review-death-decay-and-hairdos-t...






1994/01/09 - The words are Matisse's, to be found in 'The Chinese Lobster', the best of the three stories in A S Byatt's new collection. They are quoted by a politically incorrect art historian, Perry Diss, who has been accused of assault by ...

The Matisse Stories by A. S. Byatt 1993收入三篇短篇小說，我多年前買中國上海某書店的翻譯本，可一直嫌中國版本加入太多Matisse的畫，造成"喧賓奪主" (塗壓過文)的效果。
今天可以接受，因為當時的定價約28元人民幣而已。而且，讀者中像我這種Matisse專家的，肯定比萬翻之一少。他們或許需要更多的背景知識，這最好寫篇數萬字的介紹，然而，這畢竟遠比"加圖"的方式更麻煩。

末篇'The Chinese Lobster', 據說最好，我讀完之後深思小說家的想像力與技倆，十幾年，詳評Byatt 的著名長篇小說 POSSESSION之翻譯，不意外，然而，有作品的人，才是真專家。

The Matisse Stories by A S Byatt

Each story is in some way inspired by a painting of Henri Matisse, each is also about the intimate connection between seeing and feeling -- about the ways in which a glance we meant to be casual may suddenly call forth the de...

PENGUIN.CO.UK

'WHAT I dream of, is an art of balance, of purity, of quietness, without any disturbing subjects, without worry, which may be, for everyone who works with the mind, for the businessman as much as for the literary artist, something soothing, something to calm the brain, something analogous to a good armchair which relaxes him from his bodily weariness . . .' The words are Matisse's, to be found in 'The Chinese Lobster', the best of the three stories in A S Byatt's new collection. ...