Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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4 of 4 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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5 of 6 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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11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Write what you know?, May 21, 2002
A.S. Byatt is a spectacular writer, and her novels are some of the best English writing in the 20th century. And as pieces of literature, these stories are good, rich and coherent.But when she talks about art, she is way out of her depth. Truth to tell, out of the three stories in this collection, two are good. In the second one, though, she gets technical. This story deals with the mechanics of making art and the workings of the art world, and she just does not know her material. She talks about fine points of color theory and she gets it so wrong that her descriptions are just goofy. It's not like she describes an off-beat approach to color; she uses technical terms like "complimentary colors" without really understanding what they mean. In the second and third stories she second-guesses art politics but really she has no idea what the prejudices and rules are in the art world, or how galleries really function, or the relationship between the demographics of the collectors and what a dealer will show. She talks about academic art politics and makes the mistaken assumption that academia values representational competance over modernism and the avant garde. I love A.S. Byatt and will read anything she has written, but she shouldn't write about art. She hasn't done enough research.
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