Little Black Book of Stories

A Literary Fiction Short Story Collection by A. S. Byatt

Subgenres:

Fairy Tales for Adults,
Short Stories,
Magical Realism

Published 2003

Length 290 pages

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Grownup fairy tales with unsettling twists
Stories where the uncanny creeps into everyday life
Characters haunted by memory and the mysteries of the past

Publisher Description

An unforgettable collection of fairy tales for grownups—from the Booker Prize-winning author of Possession.

Like Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, Isak Dinesen and Angela Carter, A. S. Byatt knows that fairy tales are for adults. And in this ravishing collection she breathes new life into the form. Little Black Book of Stories offers shivers along with magical thrills.

Leaves rustle underfoot in a dark wood: two middle-aged women, childhood friends reunited by chance, venture into a dark forest where once, many years before, they saw–or thought they saw–something unspeakable. Another woman, recently bereaved, finds herself slowly but surely turning into stone. A coolly rational ob-gyn has his world pushed off-axis by a waiflike art student with her own ideas about the uses of the body.

Spellbinding, witty, lovely, terrifying, the Little Black Book of Stories is Byatt at the height of her craft.

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