The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye: Five Fairy Stories

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"Once upon a time," A.S. Byatt's title fairy story begins, "when men and women hurtled through the air on metal wings, when they wore webbed feet and walked on the bottom of the sea, learning the speech of whales and the songs of the dolphins... there was a woman who was largely irrelevant, and therefore happy. Her business was storytelling..." But this is no backward looking, quaint fairy time. The time is the present, and the protagonist is a sensible scholar who is given the not-at-all sensible gift of a genie. How will Gillian, an expert in fairy stories and well versed in all that can go wrong with wishes, use hers?

Distinguished British author and Booker Prize-winner A.S. Byatt creates fairy tales for adults, each a blend of the magical and the modern, and readers of Angels & Insects and Possession will recognize the role of Victorian fairy tales in her fiction. This handsome little book includes reproductions of woodcuts that evoke our childhood wonder for dragons and princesses, glass coffins and netherworldly things.

From Library Journal

The enjoyment of fairy tales comes from new ways of telling old themes. The underlying stories are predictable?innocence is tested, a mission accomplished, a lesson learned, and an adult finally born?but the characters, adventures, and outcome vary with each telling. However, every once in a while this pattern gets bent or broken, as in Byatt's collection of five previously published stories. Each story is refreshingly different, eloquently detailing the story's setting, and each contains developed characters and dialog that make them truly enjoyable. The last and title story is the length of a small novella and is itself a collection of stories within a story. Readers who can keep up will have a fascinating adventure wandering from story to story as a modern middle-aged woman is granted three wishes by a highly personal and experienced genie. More than a play on words, this piece is a play on storytelling. Byatt has redesigned the fairy tale, breathing new life into old themes, and has done it with talent to spare. For all collections. -?Laurel Duda, Marine Biological Lab., Woods Hole, Mass. Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.