September Feature

A.S. Byatt's The Matisse Stories

"A woman’s relation with her hairdresser is anatomically odd. Her face meets his belt, his haunches skim her breathing, his face is far away, high and behind.”

Two pages into A. S. Byatt’s The Matisse Stories,the narrator offers this striking description, and it makes us expect…what?  Soft porn, perhaps?  Instead, the short story “Medusa’s Ankles,” and the collection of stories in which it appears, offers an exploration of the complex and odd relations that emerge between everyday people—like a hairdresser and his client—and between people and art.

While most readers have come to know A. S. Byatt through novels, such as Possession, or the movies made from them, Byatt has also written several collections of short stories...

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