Synopses & Reviews
A new collection of stories by the internationally acclaimed author of
Any Human Heart ("the finest storyteller of his generation"
Chicago Tribune).
In "Notebook No. 9," a film director's journal becomes an unintentional record of his obsessive love for his leading lady and the slow destruction of their relationship.
In "Beulah Berlin, an AZ," a performance artist, longing for stability and order, reveals the details of her chaotic life through her comments on such varied subjects as angst, hay fever, photography, baby names, sonnets, and tobacco.
In "Fantasia on a Favorite Waltz," a prostitute finds an unexpected friend in a young man who plays piano in a brothel.
In "Adult Video," we see a man's life in film format rewinding to his years as a struggling student at Oxford, fast-forwarding to his dreams of success as a writer, and watching the present unfold as he proposes to his future wife for all the wrong reasons.
Exploring the ways a life can be dominated by a need for love and the torments that arise when love is misplaced or denied, these stories confirm William Boyd's reputation as a master of the art.
Review
"[P]acked with literary multivitamins....Boyd's writing is sharp, precise and often very funny. In this collection, it is also as diverse in tone, structure and subject matter." San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"Boyd's prose style has the economy and power of a line drawing by Matisse....Forget epiphanies! The insights arrived at in Boyd's stories are experienced rather than merely witnessed. They strike deep, and they stick." Boston Globe
Review
"Sly and consistently entertaining....This collection demonstrates Boyd's versatility as well as his virtuosity. He is as much at home writing about nineteenth-century Vienna as he is twentieth century Cape Cod." Sebastian Shakespeare, Literary Review
Review
"Fascination is a must-read book. Every one of the 16 stories has the patina of craftsmanship....The writing transcends cleverness....An impressively sophisticated offering from a writer whose charms never wane." David Robson, The Sunday Telegraph (U.K.)
Review
"[T]he overall impression Fascination gives is of a narrative-inventing mind humming hectically away, brimming over with ideas, one of which the mind/body problem, perhaps? must almost certainly be the seed of Boyd's next novel." Seattle Times
Review
"The stories are perfect....Suffused with an understanding of love, desire, and emotional incompetence." M. John Harrison, The Guardian (U.K.)
Review
"Boyd effortlessly executes all the sophisticated tricks of conventional style even as he pushes beyond convention, taking liberties with language and proportion." Christina Schwarz, the Atlantic Monthly (read the entire Atlantic Monthly review)
Synopsis
One of the most beguiling storytellers on either side of the Atlantic delivers a luminous new collection whose 14 stories are a series of variations on the theme of love-and its shady cousin lust. A film directors journal becomes an unintended chronicle of his deepening and ruinous obsession with a leading lady (“Notebook No. 9”). While flying business class, a well-behaved English architect feels the chill onset of an otherworldly visitation that will shatter his family and career (“A Haunting”). An unhappy young boy, neglected by both his father and adulterous mother, finds an unexpected friend in an elderly painter (“Varengeville”). Wise, unsettling, humane, and endlessly surprising,
Fascination lives up to its title on every page, while confirming William Boyds stature as a writer of incandescent talent.
About the Author
William Boyd is the author of eight novels, three collections of short stories, and twelve screenplays that have been filmed. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Whitbread Award for Best First Novel, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. He lives in London and southwest France.
Table of Contents
Adult Video 3
Varengeville 22
Notebook No. 9 37
A Haunting 50
Fascination 93
Beulah Berlin, an AZ 116
The Woman On the Beach With a Dog 134
The View From Yves Hill 151
Incandescence 163
Visions Fugitives 185
Fantasia On a Favorite Waltz 208
The Ghost of a Bird 219
The Mind/Body Problem 239
The Pigeon 261