Little Black Book of Stories by A.S. Byatt

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


No! No, no, no. Absolutely not, no. Upon finishing this book, I read through the reviews in an attempt to understand why so many people seem to love this book. Is it well written? Yes. The beginnings of the stories, the descriptions, these are all wonderful. But a wonderful description and flowery language do not a good story make. No, there must be more and I found the endings of all five stories very disappointing.

I read the book chronologically and so I was enamored enough with the details of "The Thing in the Forest" to find it interesting, but then the story seemed to be about the details instead of the characters of events. Pause while I think this one out -- I think that's it. That's what bothered me the most in this book. It's about the details, the descriptions and not the characters, not the story. The details should be in service to the former, not the other way around.

Enough already, I've wasted too much time. The endings of "The Thing in the Forest" and "Raw Material" were completely unearned. "A Stone Woman" was simply boring. I enjoyed "Body Art" until the horribly vague ending. But to be clear, it's not just the endings. There is a point in each of these stories where the details overwhelm the events, the very narration that is supposed to carry us through to the end. This is when I would sigh and flick through and think, "Agh, twenty more pages," but the writing was enough to pull me through those twenty pages at which point I was ready to toss the book against the wall.

Once again, I say no!



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