El libro reúne dos magníficas novelas cortas de ambientación victoriana. En la primera, un joven naturalista empieza a trabajar para un misterioso noble y acaba casándose con su hija; pero tal vez su destino conyugal sea el de los machos de ciertas especies de insectos que el ha estudiado... En la segunda, la esposa del desaparecido capitan que años atras llevo al naturalista al Amazonas organiza en su casa sesiones de espiritismo para comunicarse con los seres amados supuestamente perdidos.
They share a set of disturbing memories of a strange childhood game and of Simon, the handsome young neighbour who loved them both. Years later Simon re-enters their lives via a television programme on snakes and intrudes into their uneasy compromise of mutual antagonism and distrust.
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.
A new collection of stories from A. S. Byatt is always a winner, and this one takes an unexpected turn, bringing shivers as well as delights. Leaves rustle underfoot in a dark wood: two middle-aged women walk into a forest, as they did when they were girls, confronting their fears and memories and the strange thing they saw in their childhood - or thought they saw - so long ago. A distinguished obstetrician and young woman artist find they have sharply contrasting ideas about body parts, birth and death; an innocent member of an evening class harbours unexpected view on ''raw material''-The stories in this marvellous collection are by turns funny, spooky, sparkling and haunting. The Little Black Book of Stories holds its secrets, adding a dark quality to Byatt''s famous skill in mixing folk and fairy tale with everyday life.
Corre el año 1968. Federica Potter, una mujer inteligente, profesora de literatura y divorciada con un hijo, abandona la enseñanza a causa de las revueltas estudiantiles y pasa a conducir un programa de television donde se dan cita toda clase de intelectuales. En la Universidad de North Yorkshire, en un ambiente de investigaciones cientificas y charlas filosoficas, se prepara un ciclo interdisciplinario de conferencias sobre el tema Cuerpo y mente, que se ve perturbado por la presencia de una Antiuniversidad apostada en las cercanias, donde se consume LSD, se practica la filosofia hippie y se da cabida a clases que van desde Mao a la astrologia. En una granja cercana, una comunidad terapeutica dirigida por un psicoanalista comienza a transformarse en un culto religioso bajo la influencia de un carismatico personaje, que auna en si un terrible pasado, periodicas crisis de locura y un profundo misticismo. Cuando el productor del programa que conduce Federica se dispone a grabar las conferencias, todos los circulos empiezan a confluir.
This intoxicating novel stands on its own, while forming a triumphant conclusion to A. S. Byatt's great quartet depicting the clashing forces in English life from the early 1950s to 1970. While Frederica falls almost by accident into a career in television in London, tumultuous events in her home county of Yorkshire threaten to change her life, and those of the people she loves. Through her wayward, lovingly-drawn characters and breath-taking twists of plot, Byatt illuminates the effervescence of the 1960s - both its excitements and its dangers - as no one has done before. Magical and thought-provoking, and with spine-chilling moments, A Whistling Woman is the ultimate novel of ideas made flesh - gloriously sensual, sexy and scary, bursting with ideas, and wonderful humanity.
