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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Engaging, February 15, 2002
Matisse paintings are more or less the inspiration for this short but insightful collection of stories. A.S. Byatt has done a wonderful job of incorporating insight and art into three compelling short stories. In "Medusa's Ankles" a middle-aged woman in a beauty salon reflects on her life and appearance while searching for a look that will allow her to recapture a small piece of her youth. "Art Work" is an insightful look into the lives of three different people and their personalities. We learn about a kind hearted and open minded woman, her stodgy and fussy husband and their frumpy but dignified housekeeper. Finally in "The Chinese Lobster" we are treated to an elaborate Chinese lunch where we hear two professors discuss Matisse's nude paintings while at the same time expounding the troubles of a suicidal student suffering from anorexia. A.S. Byatt does a wonderful job of capturing the feelings of self-loathing, insecurity and frustration to create a rich work of literary fiction. The stories are very atmospheric and filled with vivid imagery. This is a good introduction to the talents of A.S. Byatt.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A painting of color, March 28, 2004
Henry Matisse's paintings were solid, colorful, and strangely calming to just sit back and look at. A.S. Byatt's "Matisse Stories" have a similar effect (though the effect of Matisse and his artwork only really is established in the third story). A mixed bag of three stories, all focusing on women and Matisse's paintings. "Medusa's Ankles" introduces us to an aging woman who is drawn into a hair salon by the "rosy nude," a Matisse painting. Her semi-friendship with the hairdresser deteriorates when he leaves his middle-aged wife for a pretty young girlfriend, forcing the woman to face her own aging and life."Art Work" introduces a very artistic couple and their eccentric housekeeper -- who has a few secrets of her own. And "Chinese Lobster" takes on the sobering topic of sexual harrassment, when a young art student files a suit against a visiting professor who is lecturing on Matisse. But it turns out that the student may be the problem... Matisse is sometimes the center of these stories, but elsewhere you can barely find the poor guy. His paintings -- and the destruction of them -- is the center of "Chinese Lobster." But his art is only a minor part of the other two stories. Byatt's flair for description doesn't fail her now -- she paints vivid, lush descriptions of restaurants, hair salons and past memories. At the same time, she adds small "everyday" touches like live lobsters, little dishes, paints. While both "Medusa's Ankles" and "Chinese Lobster" are solid, self-contained little stories, "Art Work" is something of a mess. It seems to focus on too many subplots (Debbie's feelings about giving up her work, her husband's artwork) before settling on one. And her descriptions of art galleries and so forth seem rather off, as if she has never tussled with them and isn't sure how it happens. While "Art Work" bogs down the overall effect somewhat, "Matisse Stories" is a charming little (very little) collection for fans of the French artist. Pretty and sometimes thought-provoking.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Byatt & Matisse not a perfect match, February 21, 2008
Let me begin my review by stating that I am not a big fan of the "description-for-description's sake" school of writing, with supposed "beautiful" prose standing in for an actual story. Fantastic imagery and specific details can be a great addition to a book that is already succeeding with engaging characters and a forward-moving story, but on their own I just find it to be tedious. That said, Byatt's collection of three longish short-stories has within it moments and characters I found myself drawn to, and writing that I enjoyed the rhythms and construction of, but overall this was a bit of a task for me to read. The first offering of Matisse-inspired stories, "Medusa's Ankles," was my favorite, probably because it involved conflict that was both internal and external, with an un-sympathetic protagonist who I found compassion and understanding for by its end. The third story, "The Chinese Lobster," makes more use of dialogue than mood or overly poetic language, but it ultimately stumbles in its aims by not giving the reader a situation or characters we can care a whit about. By the time I got to the second piece, "Art Work" (yes, I read them out of order), my patience with the book was waning and I wasn't rewarded in my decision to save the longest story (50-plus pages) for last. Essentially an art history course wrapped in fiction, with palettes and colours and lack of colour and shadows explored in numbing detail, the story was a misfire for me at the start. Long passages of scenic and location-specific descriptions confuse and disorient, rather than ground and illuminate this reader before any characters are even witnessed, much less introduced. The characters then reveal themselves to be paper-thin, appearing only to allow Ms. Byatt to work her muscles of laundry-list style description and repetitive sentence-structuring. Overall, the whole experience of reading this felt like too much work for too little reward.
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