I read a book!
Jun. 2nd, 2016 08:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lunabee34I never thought I'd live to see the day that finishing a book would be an accomplishment for me, voracious reader since childhood, but yes, it has become so (why must my anxiety manifest in such a stupid way?).
I just finished A. S. Byatt's Sugar and Other Stories, a lovely short story collection from 1992. I always like Byatt's writing, and this collection is no exception. I highly recommend it, and underneath the cut I'll post some short comments about each story.
SPOILERS
"Racine and the Tablecloth"--This is a story about female authority figures, about power imbalances between teachers and students, about what it's like to inhabit a wholly female space (boarding school in this case) and not fit in.
"Rose-Coloured Teacups"--This is a story about mother-daughter relationships, about avoiding the mistakes your own mother made, about the power of memory. (Memory is a common thread that runs throughout this collection.)
"The July Ghost"--This is a very sad story. A mother loses her son and wishes terribly to see his ghost but cannot; instead the man lodging in her house is the only one able to see the ghost. Very poignant.
"The Next Room"--What happens after death? In this story, those who've died linger, not as ghosts, but as voices in the next room. Inescapable voices.
"The Dried Witch"--This was my second to least favorite story. In it, a woman finds power through magic but eventually suffers the consequences of using it.
"Loss of Face"--This was my least favorite story. Truly, I didn't "get it" but I'm not interested in re-reading it more carefully. A woman's at a conference and mistakes one Asian person for another, causing her to lose face.
"On the Day That E. M. Forster Died"--This is one of my favorites from this collection. It's about the nature of writing and what motivates us to tell stories (another thread that runs through this collection). Here's how Byatt describes the motivation of the story's protagonist: It was because she had become sensuously excited in early childhood by Beatrix Potter's sentence structure, or Kipling's adjectives. It was because she was a voyeur and liked looking in through other people's windows on warmer, brighter worlds. It was because she was secretly deprived of power, and liked to construct other worlds in which things would be as she chose, lovely or horrid.
"The Changeling"--Another story with a writer protagonist that is about the nature of writing. This is a very bleak story, IMHO. In it, a female writer has used her novels as a kind of therapy, to exorcise certain elements of her past, but is unable to reach out and help people in her real life who are experiencing similar situations (including her own son). She cannot deal with real life or pick up on the implications of the behavior of the people around her. I think she's so afraid to be the little girl she thinks she's moved past that she cannot allow for the existence of anyone else in that same situation.
"In the Air"--What a freaking creepy story. Although no sexual assault or other violence occurs, this is very much a story about both those things. In it, the female protagonist is terrified of being raped to the point where she must force herself to go outside. Despite her fear, she intervenes in a situation she encounters on a walk with chilling consequences.
"Precipice-Encircled"--This is another of my favorites. It's about Robert Browning in his grief after Elizabeth's death and a trip he never got to take and the people he would have stayed with on that trip. It's a very melancholy story, but the language is utterly exquisite.
"Sugar"--Another favorite, this story is about memory, how we construct our past, and how that construction forms our current identity.
I have already started reading another book (Yay!), so hopefully I'll have another reading post to make soon. :)
I just finished A. S. Byatt's Sugar and Other Stories, a lovely short story collection from 1992. I always like Byatt's writing, and this collection is no exception. I highly recommend it, and underneath the cut I'll post some short comments about each story.
SPOILERS
"Racine and the Tablecloth"--This is a story about female authority figures, about power imbalances between teachers and students, about what it's like to inhabit a wholly female space (boarding school in this case) and not fit in.
"Rose-Coloured Teacups"--This is a story about mother-daughter relationships, about avoiding the mistakes your own mother made, about the power of memory. (Memory is a common thread that runs throughout this collection.)
"The July Ghost"--This is a very sad story. A mother loses her son and wishes terribly to see his ghost but cannot; instead the man lodging in her house is the only one able to see the ghost. Very poignant.
"The Next Room"--What happens after death? In this story, those who've died linger, not as ghosts, but as voices in the next room. Inescapable voices.
"The Dried Witch"--This was my second to least favorite story. In it, a woman finds power through magic but eventually suffers the consequences of using it.
"Loss of Face"--This was my least favorite story. Truly, I didn't "get it" but I'm not interested in re-reading it more carefully. A woman's at a conference and mistakes one Asian person for another, causing her to lose face.
"On the Day That E. M. Forster Died"--This is one of my favorites from this collection. It's about the nature of writing and what motivates us to tell stories (another thread that runs through this collection). Here's how Byatt describes the motivation of the story's protagonist: It was because she had become sensuously excited in early childhood by Beatrix Potter's sentence structure, or Kipling's adjectives. It was because she was a voyeur and liked looking in through other people's windows on warmer, brighter worlds. It was because she was secretly deprived of power, and liked to construct other worlds in which things would be as she chose, lovely or horrid.
"The Changeling"--Another story with a writer protagonist that is about the nature of writing. This is a very bleak story, IMHO. In it, a female writer has used her novels as a kind of therapy, to exorcise certain elements of her past, but is unable to reach out and help people in her real life who are experiencing similar situations (including her own son). She cannot deal with real life or pick up on the implications of the behavior of the people around her. I think she's so afraid to be the little girl she thinks she's moved past that she cannot allow for the existence of anyone else in that same situation.
"In the Air"--What a freaking creepy story. Although no sexual assault or other violence occurs, this is very much a story about both those things. In it, the female protagonist is terrified of being raped to the point where she must force herself to go outside. Despite her fear, she intervenes in a situation she encounters on a walk with chilling consequences.
"Precipice-Encircled"--This is another of my favorites. It's about Robert Browning in his grief after Elizabeth's death and a trip he never got to take and the people he would have stayed with on that trip. It's a very melancholy story, but the language is utterly exquisite.
"Sugar"--Another favorite, this story is about memory, how we construct our past, and how that construction forms our current identity.
I have already started reading another book (Yay!), so hopefully I'll have another reading post to make soon. :)
no subject
Date: 2016-06-03 06:44 am (UTC)I love that Byatt collection! She's so good.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-03 05:25 pm (UTC)I have another two of her books I haven't read yet on the stack, so I'm looking forward to that.
no subject
Date: 2016-06-03 09:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-06-04 01:15 am (UTC)