Synopses & Reviews
All the Rage was named to the shortlist of 'Best Short Story Collection 2014' by The Frank O'Connor Prize.
A.L. Kennedy, the author of The Blue Book and Day, writes like a force of nature. Claire Messud says shes “one of Britains most iconoclastic and fiercely independent talents.” Richard Ford calls her “a profound writer,” and Ali Smith dubbed her “the laureate of good hurt.”
All the Rage is Kennedys riveting new collection, a luscious feast of language that encompasses real estate and forlorn pets, adolescents and sixtysomethings, weekly liaisons and obsessive affairs, “certain types of threat and the odder edges of sweet things.” The women and men in these dozen stories search for love, solace, and a clear glimpse of what their lives have become. Anything can set them off thinking—the sad homogeneity of hotel breakfasts, a sex shop operated under Canadian values (whatever those are), an army of joggers dressed as Santa. With her boundless empathy and gift for the perfect phrase, Kennedy makes us care about each of her characters. In “Takes You Home,” a mans attempt to sell his flat becomes a journey to the interior, by turns comic and harrowing. And “Late in Life” deftly evokes an intergenerational love affair free of the usual clichés, the younger partner asking the older, “What should I wear at your funeral?”
Alive with memory, humor, and longing, All the Rage is A.L. Kennedy at her inimitable best.
May 2014 Best Book of the Month by Amazon in the Literature & Fiction category
Review
"Byatt demonstrates her formidable skill in this little collection of perfectly rendered pieces. The prose is arresting and memorable, the images linger, getting under your skin." Library Journal
Review
"Carefully constructed, highly allusive, containing fictional artists and artfully faked 'fiction' within the fiction, these five stories are not just meditations on art and its place in the world; they are also thrilling Gothic tales in their own right." Claire Messud, The New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
A new collection of Byatt stories is always a winner and never fails to delight. This one takes an unexpected turn, bringing shivers as well as magical thrills.
Little Black Book of Stories holds its secrets, and they will linger in your mind forever. The five stories in this marvelous collection are by turns funny, spooky, sparkling, sad, and utterly unforgettable.
Synopsis
The Booker Prize—winning author of
Possession and
A Whistling Woman is at her best in this dazzling collection of five new tales.
Little Black Book of Stories offers shivers along with magical thrills. Leaves rustle underfoot in a dark wood: two middle-aged women walk into a forest, as they did when they were girls, confronting their childhood fears and memories and the strange thing they saw–or thought they saw–so long ago. A distinguished male obstetrician and a young woman artist meet in a hospital, but they have very different ideas about body parts, birth, and death. A man meets the ghost of his living wife; a woman turns to stone. And an innocent member of an evening creative writing class turns out to have her own decided views on the best way to use “raw material.”
These unforgettable stories are by turns haunting, funny, sparkling, and scary. Byatt’s Little Black Book adds a deliciously dark note to her skill in mixing folk and fairy tales with everyday life.
Synopsis
Short-listed three times for the Booker Prize, Anita Desai explores time and transformation in these artful novellas
Award-winning, internationally acclaimed author Anita Desai ruminates on art and memory, illusion and disillusion, and the sharp divide between lifes expectations and its realities in three perfectly etched novellas. Set in India in the not-too-distant past, the stories dramas illuminate the ways in which Indian culture can nourish or suffocate. All are served up with Desais characteristic perspicuity, subtle humor, and sensitive writing.
Overwhelmed by their own lack of purpose, the men and women who populate these tales set out on unexpected journeys that present them with a fresh sense hope and opportunity. Like so many flies in a spiders web, however, they cannot escape their surroundingsas none of us can. An impeccable craftsman, Desai elegantly reveals our human frailties and the power of place.
Synopsis
A dozen sharp new stories by one of contemporary fiction's acknowledged masters
About the Author
A. S. Byatt is internationally acclaimed as a novelist, short story writer and critic. Educated at Cambridge, she taught at the Central School of Art and Design and at University College, London before becoming a full-time writer in 1983. Her most recent novel is A Whistling Woman, the conclusion of the famous "Frederica" quartet.
Table of Contents
Late in Life 1
Baby Blue 15
Because Its a Wednesday 35
These Small Pieces 47
The Practice of Mercy 59
Knocked 73
All the Rage 85
Takes You Home 133
The Effects of Good Government on the City 151
Run Catch Run 171
A Thing Unheard-of 187
This Man 199
Acknowledgements 213