I felt very conflicted about this book. The majority of stories in it were extremely unpleasant, and several -- "The Dried Witch," "In the Air" -- so painful I couldn't read them in full. Byatt is not at all in her best in the realistic short story medium; her plots stop short in that maddening manner so common to modern short story authors, so it's as if the last third of the story itself remains unwritten, and only a few times (at the end of "On the Day that E.M. Forster Died," in parts of "Racine and the Tablecloth") does she achieve that true compression of theme and time which is necessary in the form of good short stories. She also seems very preoccupied with death and the impossibility of an afterlife, to a distressing extent (for the reader, if not for her). The stories themselves lack the fine observation of characters over years which give depth to novels like Still Life and the rich varied intellectual tapestry of dozens of different ideas that enlivens Babel Tower and Possession. (In this she is interestingly unlike her bête noire, D. H. Lawrence, whose short stories are far finer than his novels. I also confess my interest in this collection was stirred by her supposedly handing the book to an interviewer to use for personal background.)And yet, the final two stories -- "Precipice-Encurled," serving perhaps as a kind of mini-Possession or rough sketch for Angels and Insects, and "Sugar," which is explicitly, openly a story about the storytelling novelist (and her fabricating mother) herself -- are amazing, well worth the price of the book, redeeming and rescuing everything else. So I don't really know how to rate his book. I greatly disliked over nine-tenths of it. But that final tenth was fantastic.
Two of the best stories are "The Day E. M. Forster Died" and "The Next Room." The first story is a brilliant, understated reflection on how death shapes up our art. The story made me think about what I missed the last time I read Howards End. "The Next Room" is Byatt at her best combination of sharp observation and compassion, mundane and extraordinary. I liked several of the other stories. Some of them so probed the character's vulnerabilities and fears,though, that they were more painful than pleasurable to read.
What do You think about Sugar And Other Stories (1992)?
Eine sehr biografische Kurzgeschichte, in der die Autorin schildert, wie sie sich während des Sterbeprozesses des Vaters an die Geschichten über ihn und seine Familie erinnert. Das ungewöhnliche ist, dass diese Geschichten nicht vom zurückhaltenden Vater selbst, sondern von dessen Frau, der Mutter der Erzählerin, teils auch mit Ausschmückungen erzählt wurden. Damit war das Buch eine interessante Ergänzung zu Eva Manesses Buch Vienna, das ich zuvor gelesen hatte und in dem es ebenfalls um phantasievoll weiter erzählte Familiengeschichte ging. Byatt leitet aus diesem nicht immer wahrheitsgetreuen Erzählen ihr eigenes Schreiben ab und verwebt in die Geschichte auch Gedanken zu Kunst (insbesondere van Gogh) und Literatur (hier hat sie mich vor allem auf Robert Brownings Buch „Der Ring und das Buch“ neugierig gemacht.) Darüberhinaus habe ich noch nie eine solch wunderbare Beschreibung der Produktion von Bonbons gelesen.
—Steffi
This is one of those books that makes me wish it were possible to use half-stars in rating it. It's a very uneven collection--certainly not a four-star book--but the best stories in it are good enough that three stars seems a bit paltry. Byatt's command of language is, as always, excellent, and I can only admire the way she seems to ignore all rules about story-making and to write only to please herself and work out her own ideas about fiction. The narrators of these stories are almost all intensely self-conscious; sometimes this self-consciousness works, but in other stories it's tedious.
—Katie
