Short stories by A.S.Byatt
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Short stories by A.S.Byatt
Collection of five short stories: 'The Thing in the Forest', 'Body Art', 'A Stone Woman', 'Raw Material' and 'The Pink Ribbon'. They are called short stories but to me they look more as novellas than short stories. My favourite is 'The Thing in the Forest'. At first, the reader might be lured to take it as a fairy tale, another interpretation of reminding children not to go to the unknown. However, as the story progresses, we learn that the story is much more complex than a little fairy tale. The Thing (An English Worm) - something made of straw and broken branches, with a face which resembles a turnip - is a fantastic symbol of something scary, yet unknown. Many critics of this particular story and of the other stories in the collection had agreed that 'The Thing in the Forest' is a study of an aftermath of the war, loneliness, misery and death.When I was re-reading the story again a couple of days ago, I had a bit of shock to find another theme that emerged from this story. What if what the girls actually witnessed in the forest was an act of sexual assault and murder of Alys, the girl who disappeared and about whom they had never talked again? So, they had invented The Thing which they 'saw, or believed they saw' in the forest. The trauma of their experience in the forest, among the war and death of their fathers, had influenced of who the girls became later in their life. One of them, Penny, had returned to the scene many years later to, what I think, would be an offering her body and her soul to The Thing. A wonderful, yet, totally shocking story, told very unemotionally, in a matter of fact style.
The theme of abusing woman`s body is carried on in some other stories too. In 'Body Art' a girl is forced to give a birth to a baby by an ambitious gynaecologist. In 'The Pink Ribbon' a tired, desperate husband is physically abusing a teletubbies doll because he cannot cope with his wife`s illness anymore. But the most direct and most horrific use of the woman body is described in 'A Stone Woman'. Based on Icelandic legend, the story follows a metamorphosis of a woman slowly, but without panic or surprise, turning into a stone.
A.S. Byatt is a master of symbolism and one of the greatest British writers. Little Black Book of Stories is a gem in her bibliography.