|
|
A.S. Byatt ListingsIf you cannot find what you want on this page, then please use our search feature to search all our listings. Click on Title to view full description
|
|
|
1 |
A.S. Byatt Passions of the Mind: Selected Writings
Vintage 1993 0679736786 / 9780679736783 Soft Cover Very Good
0679736786 Very Good- c. 1991, 332pp., (lt.edge wear, covers lt.soiled-lt.rubbed, page ends yellowed, a few pages creased to corners, text clean) From Publishers Weekly Wide-ranging essays in literary criticism from the Booker Prize-winning author of Possession. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal Readers of Byatt's Still Life ( LJ 11/15/85) and, to a lesser extent, Possession ( LJ 11/1/90) will find this collection of her criticism true to her quality and themes. The essays range from describing the influences on her own work to analysis of her favorite Victorians, Robert Browning and George Eliot, and such modernist writers as Ford Madox Ford, William Golding, and Iris Murdoch. Some female writers (Willa Cather, Elizabeth Bowen, and Toni Morrison, among others) are treated, as are the relationship of the real and the symbolic, as revealed by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles Rycroft, and Vincent Van Gogh. Byatt's interest in the influence of religion on writing shines through. The writing is brilliant, requiring a substantial awareness of English literature and command of the language. For academic and large public libraries. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/15/91. - Ann Irvine, Montgomery Cty. P.L., Md. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. From Kirkus Reviews A collection of previously published essays and reviews (The Guardian, Times Literary Supplement, etc.), seemingly more the work of a competent grad student than an imaginative novelist, and sure to disappoint those who enjoyed Byatt's Booker Prize-winning Possession (1990). In essays about her favorite Victorians (Robert Browning and George Eliot) and moderns such as Ford Madox Ford and William Golding, Byatt, a former lecturer in English and American Literature at the Univ. of London, explores the relations between narrative and religion. These writers, Byatt suggests, vindicate the ``fictive form'' as the appropriate place to resolve the problem ``of the real'' in a postreligious world. For Byatt, Browning is ``a poet who writes of men and women, all separately incarnate, all separately aware of their necessarily and splendidly limited ways of infinite passion and the pain of finite hearts that yearn.'' Eliot's intelligence, she concludes, ``combined thought and feeling in a new form of poetic but ironic realist fiction.'' In perhaps the most accessible and persuasive essay here (``Accurate Letters: Ford Madox Ford''), Byatt describes Ford as a writer who taught us the distinction between the ``great lie'' and ``the hard ideas of truth.'' And a number of her reviews on writers as varied as Toni Morrison, whom she admires, and Barbara Pym, whom she does not (``[Pym] appears gentler than Spark or Weldon but is also infinitely less generous, humane and imaginative'') are intelligent, perceptive, and refreshingly opinionated. Most often confined by narrow academic parameters to lengthy quotes and tentatively advanced ideas, Byatt's rich inventive talents are well served here only rarely. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP.
Price:
1.61 USD
|
|
Add to Shopping Cart |
|
|
|
|
|
2 |
A. S.; Byatt, Antonia Susan Byatt Still Life
Don Mills, Ontario, Canada Collier Books 1991 0020178557 / 9780020178552 Trade Paperback Fine VG+
0020178557 4.0 out of 5 stars 4 1/2 stars; almost perfect, April 20, 2003 By Romantic Anna (Bronx, NY United States) - See all my reviews This review is from: Still Life (Paperback) This is a breathtaking novel. I was not that enthusiatic about The Virgin in te Garden but this book was amazing on every level. I love the development of these characters (who seem very real, very Known to me). Frederica is especially well developed. Her intelligence and lack of self-knowledge are an endearing package. I personally love the intricate explanations of ideas- it is refreshing to read about things that I think about and yet have never found elsewhere. My only real probelm with the book is that the author's voice intrudes too much; it isn't necessary to me to be AWARE of the fact that this is a novel. Byatt almost wants us to be aware that this is fiction when I would always rather be in that pleasant state of believing in the fiction. But overall, I couldn't put this book down; what happens at the end is shockingly sad. I wonder what book 3 in the series will bring.
Price:
1.99 USD
|
|
Add to Shopping Cart |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
