Colour rush

In The Matisse Stories, A.S. Byatt uses three paintings as references for three short stories. In "Medusa's Ankles" a woman has come to trust her hairdresser "with her disintegration", but when she revolts against her middle-aged self in the salon, she expresses herself in violent fashion and emerges somehow a new person. In "Art Work", a painter of bare, bleak neutrality who has a "terror of the brilliance of colour" finds his symphonically restrained work ultimately inspired by a cacophonous, atonal and completely unexpected influence. While in "The Chinese Lobster", two art historians (one of whom is marvellously named Dr. Himmelblau) lunching on "plates of glistening viridian seaweed, .....the hot flame of chilli... and the slaty tang of black beans" find their way out of the lifeless and colourless "white room" that each has been inhabiting.

Such brief summaries don't do justice to the depth of these stories. A.S. Byatt is a master of image, allusion and language and uses them lavishly and with great intensity. Her writing is rich, ripe, deliberately overblown at times, but always brilliant, and as a 'product' of Matisse's painting, perfectly judged.

This a short book but a luscious, delicious one. To use a Matisse analogy, it is rather like "a good armchair" but one whose loose spring occasionally jabs its occupant in an uncomfortable place. It makes the reader sit up and take notice, and being both chromatically exuberant and complex, it invites - though does not require -careful re-reading.

Comments

[peg]

I love the Matisse analogy - we do need a good poke now and then. I love the piece of glass - such wonderful colour and it looks to me like it would have been pulled and twisted!
I am really enjoying your posts of colour!

[peg]

Here I am again! After your description of 'The Matisse Stories' I checked out our library and I have ordered the book and also "The Whistling Woman". Our library system covers all of Vancouver Island, except for Victoria, so we do have access to lots of books, as would your cousin. Thanks for putting me onto these reads. I did enjoy 'Digging to America'.

[Charity]

Sadly, my library does not have this one, but they do have it on tape. I'm going to check it out on Monday, and give it a listen. :0)