The Matisse Stories

These three stories celebrate the eye even as they reveal its unexpected proximity to the heart. For if each of A.S. Byatt's narratives is in some way inspired by a painting of Henri Matisse, each is also about the intimate connection between seeing and feeling--about the ways in which a glance we meant to be casual may suddenly call forth the deepest reserves of our being. Beautifully written, intensely observed,The Matisse Storiesis fiction of spellbinding authority. "Full of delight and humor...The Matisse Storiesis studded with brilliantly apt images and a fine sense for subtleties of conversation and emotion."--San Francisco Chronicle From the Trade Paperback edition.

A.S. Byatt is the author of the novels <b>Possession</b> (winner of the Booker Prize in 1990), <b>The Game</b>, and the sequence <b>The Virgin in the Garden</b><i>, </i><b>Still Life</b>, and <b>Babel Tower</b>. She has also written two novellas, published together as <b>Angels and Insects</b>, and four collections of shorter works, including <b>The Matisse Stories</b> and <b>The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye</b>. Educated at Cambridge, she was a senior lecturer in English at University College, London, before becoming a full-time writer in 1983. A distinguished critic as well as a novelist, she lives in London.