The Djinn In The Nightingale's Eye (1998) - Plot & Excerpts
I think I have a new author to add to my quiver of favorites. This is the second book by Byatt I have read, and both have been spectacular! Byatt’s style is poetic, lyric and beautiful. The words process like an ancient tapestry telling an epic story. Byatt’s sentences are often long and contain many phrases, but rarely do they seem clumsy or hard to follow. Instead the phrases march out a beat that leads to a clear concise thought. There is an echo of haunting in the writing as well, a note of undercurrent that is terrifying, in the way that legends are terrifying. Byatt’s writings step in and out of fantasy; they are fairy tales, everyday life interjected with the otherworldly. My appetite for fairy tales has been growing of late, and Byatt provides a feast. The book has four shorter stories, then the much longer title story. The early stories build, each was progressively better for me. “The Story of the Eldest Princess” lived both inside and outside the bounds of traditional fairy tales. It is a fairy tale with a self-aware participant. She knows she is in a fairy tale and tries to act accordingly. However, she is never sure if her second guessing is a correction to a wrong first choice, or self-doubt keeping her from a correct first choice. Having read Grimm’s fairy tales, it is a wonderful take on the frequent subject of three daughters/sons. “Dragon’s Breath” contains much of the haunting I alluded to earlier. Is it a metaphor of what life is like for insects looking at humanity? Is it a cautionary tale of the destruction of society that technology brings? I have no idea, but I love it. Byatt has an outstanding observation that after surviving harrowing incidents, that the memories of those great moments in life “cast flashes and floods of paradisal light in odd places and at odd times.” It has been so true in my own life; distant memories of powerful moments flash in at very strange times. Byatt also makes a great commentary that the everyday boredom is winnowed out of stories, legends, fairy tales. Even in the midst of any epic tale, most of the time has to be spent doing the tedious, eating, sleeping, walking, relieving one’s self. Those moments never make the story. I think it is safe to say that the title story is not like anything I have read. What would it be like if you came upon a genie (djinn) in a bottle in modern life? What would you wish for? Would you learn from the warnings of other fairy tale wishers? Byatt’s story wanders and meanders around this topic. She has frequent precursors and foreshadowing, as well as nods back to events from a few pages ago. There is a heavy reward for paying attention, as these backtracks create a balance in the story that tips back and forth. Perhaps Byatt’s greatest strength is her beautiful wordplay. She uses many subtle puns and plays on words, and nowhere do they shine as bright as in these references to past and future parts of the story.I couldn’t help but compare Byatt to Margaret Atwood even though their writing style is not similar. But, both deal with the supernatural in creative ways. They are only 3 years apart, Byatt being the elder, both refer back to a youth affected by World War Two. Both seem to frequently write about aging women and their body image, expressing feelings of betrayal on how their bodies have changed. I find it fascinating. I have not found male writers who write about their aging bodies in the same way. I enjoyed the portrayals of sex in the book, it was used much in the way as it is in 1001 Arabian Nights. The expressions of sex are very eastern, free from the influence of Christianity and is damning of the flesh. I also enjoyed the many, many references to other great works. Proust, Chaucer and, others are brought up, compared and contrasted. Byatt seems to skim the cream from these iconic writers. Each adds their drops of flavor to her tales. They help get across points the author is trying to make.Despite deeply enjoying her previous work, Ragnarok, I approached this book skeptically. I did not think it would be a book I love, especially with such a wild name. But I fell hard for it. It is something I can strongly recommend to anyone who likes fairy tales and daydreams. Take the time to read it slowly, or even out loud. It is a book that is meant to be heard. It lands on my bookcase hall of fame.
This one got me emotionally, intellectually, and viscerally. Five enchanting fairytales for adults that successfully triggered the magical feelings of childhood while surviving the scrutiny of adult wisdom and modern sensibilities. Clever, very clever, as A.S. Byatt certainly is. The jist of the djinn, the namesake story? A divorced, past-her-prime, upper middle-aged professor specializing in narratology finds herself in the possession of a genie trapped inside a beautiful “nightingale eye" glass vessel given to her by a friend in Turkey. The djinn materializes as her monstrously male, shape-shifting, intellectual match at long last. He is curious, intriguing, smart, irreverent. Predictably, he must grant her three wishes. As an expert in fairytales, Gillian must suss out this very surreal situation and expertly navigate the path, knowing full well the dangers involved in wishing. Carefully, thoughtfully, and introspectively, she wends her way into a relationship with her genie while navigating her deepest dreams and desires. They play, they plot, they learn. Cautious, wise, and tender, they find something unexpected that bends the truth between reality and fantasy. The brevity of this book was appealing, as was its physical format: 274 pages in a tidy, 4x6 hardbound package. I am prone to fall for small and pleasing pieces of art whether they be in the form of books, bars of chocolate, etc. This deckled edge beauty boasts old-school Fournier typeface with beautiful engravings opening each of the stories. Nice. In these days of screens, efficiency and speed it felt indulgent to excuse myself to bed early, burrow into velvet-covered goosedown and commence to getting lost with my little piece of art in hand… But I digress. The tales are intriguing, beginning as expected and then twisting and turning expertly into surprising and comical directions. I shamelessly confess to being rapt – I knew I had been played into falling for the fairytale but didn’t care. What is life if not believing in the unbelievable now and again? Delicious. A perfect late winter treat.
What do You think about The Djinn In The Nightingale's Eye (1998)?
Another author introduced during my class exploring fairy tales. In this case, A. S. Byatt has modern original fairy tales (as opposed to Angela Carter's modern retelling/resetting of "classic" tales) for us to enjoy.1. The Glass Coffin: Very similar to the idea of Sleeping Beauty. Nothing too outstanding.2. Gode's Story: kinda weird story involving a dancer with wanderlust who asks a girl to wait for him, and this girl seems to pine and wither while waiting, and somehow there's a mysterious dancing baby (toyol? LoL!), and it was weird...3. The Story of the Eldest Princess: this was the most delightful tale of the entire book. The eldest Princess who recognises she's caught in a tale, and does what she can to escape the formula. Her helpers are a scorpion, a cockroach and frog - unlike the "nicer" creatures you'd expect :-)4. Dragon's Breath: A rather slow story, which to me didn't really go anywhere, yet it did paint the avoidance/ self-deception practiced by humans quite well. 5. The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye: the main story of the collection, a very slow read, full of details and side-stories, but it ends relatively well. I would recommend you read it, but don't buy it, just check it out from your local library.
—lynne naranek
"The Glass Coffin"Short and uninteresting, the first short story of the collection made me immediately doubt the person who recommended Byatt. "The Miller's Daughter"-A sad story that I had difficulty getting into initially. I don't feel as though I understood the underlying message of the story nor any of its allusions well enough to appreciate the story, but it was a decent read. "The Story of the Eldest Princess"An interesting take on the princess fairytale, and certainly more engaging than "The Glass Key.""Dragon's Breath"-Uninspiring story with slightly disgusting imagery and insipid characters. This is certainly not your average fairytale, which is clearly something Byatt wants to avoid in her writings. And although she succeeds in doing that, this story, like the ones that proceed it, presumes to carry an important message but reveals it in a rushed manner (a quick paragraph at the end, a reflective sentence here and there) that is not particularly entertaining or revelatory. Maybe I've outgrown the genre, or maybe my imagination is lacking. Either way, her attempts at being unpredictable in her stories generally fail and I am constantly left wondering whether or not I should finish each one. Luckily they're short. "The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye"-TBR
—Nwm
I've finished all stories but the titular one. I have to say that Byatt did a remarkable job at making the stories read like fairy tales, which isn't much of a compliment if you've ever read any fairy tales. They tend to be sparse on description and characterization."The Glass Coffin" was a comfortably predictable fairy tale, with a slightly different ending. The "happy ending" takes a different tone that the usual "hero marries the princess" endings in most fairy tales."Gode's Story" is one I didn't quite "get" or enjoy. Part of it was Byatt's way of writing as if the whole story is a run-on sentence, which rankled me and made the story needlessly confusing. Probably because it has been drilled into my head since childhood that beginning a sentence with "and" is very, VERY bad form."The Story of the Eldest Princess". I liked this one, though I'm not quite sure why. For some reason, Byatt writing the Eldest Princess as so genre-savvy didn't make the greatest impression on me, but I liked the story none-the-less."Dragon's Breath" is the dullest of the lot so far. Nothing much to say about it other than it felt boring and pointless. I'm really hoping that this tale wasn't meant to be taken as allegory or have some sort of moral to it, because I fucking hate stories like that.I'm looking forward to "The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye" if only because it's summary in the dust flap made it sound very interesting and appealing. Assuming Byatt executes the story well, which I'm rather doubting at this point, it may be the star of the book.
—Anne
