The Matisse Stories

by A.S. Byatt

Each story is in some way inspired by a painting of Henri Matisse, each is also about the intimate connection between seeing and feeling -- about the ways in which a glance we meant to be casual may suddenly call forth the deepest reserves of our being.

Their subjects' lives unravel from simple beginnings -- a trip to the hair dresser, a cleaning woman's passion for knitting, lunch in a Chinese restaurant but gradually the veneer of ordinariness is peeled back to expose pain, reveal desire, or express the intensity of joy in color and creation.

These stories are all about human beings: about how little we can know (or may care to know) about the people with whom we spend our lives, and how tragic the results of that ignorance or indifference can be.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Art, Literary Fiction, British Literature, Literature, Audiobook

141 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

A.S. Byatt (Antonia Susan Byatt) is internationally known for her novels and short stories. Her novels include the Booker Prize winner Possession, The Biographer’s Tale and the quartet, The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, Babel Tower and A Whistling Woman, and her highly acclaimed collections of short stories include Sugar and Other Stories, The Matisse Stories, The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, Elementals and her most recent book Little Black Book of Stories. A distinguished critic as well as a writer of fiction, A S Byatt was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999.

BYATT, Dame Antonia (Susan), (Dame Antonia Duffy), DBE 1999 (CBE 1990); FRSL 1983; Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France), 2003 , writer; born 24 Aug. 1936;

Daughter of His Honour John Frederick Drabble, QC and late Kathleen Marie Bloor

Byatt has famously been engaged in a long-running feud with her novelist sister, Margaret Drabble, over the alleged appropriation of a family tea-set in one of her novels. The pair seldom see each other and each does not read the books of the other.

Married
1st, 1959, Ian Charles Rayner Byatt (Sir I. C. R. Byatt) marriage dissolved. 1969; one daughter (one son deceased)
2nd, 1969, Peter John Duffy; two daughters.

Education
Sheffield High School; The Mount School, York; Newnham College, Cambridge (BA Hons; Hon. Fellow 1999); Bryn Mawr College, Philadelphia, USA; Somerville College, Oxford.

Academic Honours:
Hon. Fellow, London Inst., 2000; Fellow UCL, 2004
Hon. DLitt: Bradford, 1987; DUniv York, 1991; Durham, 1991; Nottingham, 1992; Liverpool, 1993; Portsmouth, 1994; London, 1995; Sheffield, 2000; Kent 2004; Hon. LittD Cambridge, 1999

Prizes
The PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Of Fiction prize, 1986 for STILL LIFE
The Booker Prize, 1990, for POSSESSION
Irish Times/Aer Lingus International Fiction Prize, 1990 for POSSESSION
The Eurasian section of Best Book in Commonwealth Prize, 1991 for POSSESSION
Premio Malaparte, Capri, 1995;
Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature, California, 1998 for THE DJINN IN THE NIGHTINGALE''S EYE
Shakespeare Prize, Toepfer Foundation, Hamburg, 2002;

Publications:
The Shadow of the Sun, 1964;
Degrees of Freedom, 1965 (reprinted as Degrees of Freedom: the early novels of Iris Murdoch, 1994);
The Game, 1967;
Wordsworth and Coleridge in their Time, 1970 (reprinted as Unruly Times: Wordsworth and Coleridge in their Time, 1989);
Iris Murdoch 1976
The Virgin in the Garden, 1978;
GEORGE ELIOT Selected Essays, Poems and Other Writings , 1979 (editor);
Still Life, 1985
Sugar and Other Stories, 1987;
George Eliot: selected essays, 1989 (editor)
Possession: a romance, 1990
Robert Browning''s Dramatic Monologues, 1990 (editor);
Passions of the Mind, (essays), 1991;
Angels and Insects (novellas),1992
The Matisse Stories (short stories),1993;
The Djinn in the Nightingale''s Eye: five fairy stories, 1994
Imagining Characters, 1995 (joint editor);
New Writing 4, 1995 (joint editor);
Babel Tower, 1996;
New Writing 6, 1997 (joint editor);
The Oxford Book of English Short Stories, 1998 (editor);
Elementals: Stories of fire and ice (short stories), 1998;
The Biographer''s Tale, 2000;
On Histories and Stories (essays), 2000;
Portraits in Fiction, 2001;
The Bird Hand Book, 2001 (Photographs by Victor Schrager Text By AS Byatt);
A Whistling Woman, 2002
Little

Reviews

[Jim Fonseca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Three short stories by AS Byatt, best-known for her novel Possession, winner of the 1990 Booker Prize.

All three short stories have a tremendous amount of detail about art. Each begins with a reference to a painting by Matisse. I looked but did not see that the author had any professional training in art.

All three stories are about a professional woman in mid-to-late life facing a crisis. The crisis, I’ll say, revolves around ‘the meaning of life’ at that stage of her career. The author, born in 1936, was 57 when she published these stories in 1993.



In Medusa’s Ankles a woman is getting her hair done for a television interview that she feels is coming a bit late in life. She’s concerned about her appearance, and why didn’t this overdue recognition of her work happen twenty years before? She has a crisis in the beauty shop.

In Art Work we have a husband-wife artist couple. She’s the main breadwinner in the family, writing stories and producing illustrations for a women’s magazine. (I liked this: “The editor of A Woman’s Place is a man, who reads and slightly despises the pieces about the guilt of the working mother which his periodical periodically puts out.”) Her husband, the stereotypical obsessive painter who can’t be disturbed, has the whole upper level of the house as his studio. But his stuff doesn’t sell.



They have teen-aged children and the house throbs with the noise of Mrs. Brown, their housekeeper of ten years, cooking and running appliances. Mrs. Brown doesn’t understand art and she wears brightly colored mismatched clothing from the thrift store. But wow, she has a surprise in store for her artistic employers.

In The Chinese Lobster, an older woman, an art professor and also Dean of Women, is meeting with an older male professor for lunch. They are there to informally discuss a crisis she has to deal with. The professor is an admirer of Matisse and he is supervising a female student who feels that Matisse was a male chauvinist pig and that his work portrayed women simply as objects for the male gaze. The student's ‘art project’ consists simply of smearing words and symbols in excrement across copies of Matisse paintings.

Now the young woman - mentally unstable, unattractive and anorexic - has accused the man of sexual harassment. Someone has to go. Surprisingly, all three people have something in common that really ups the stakes of the outcome of this crisis. All are prone to suicide attempts.

I thought all three stories were excellent. Worth a ‘5.’



Top: The Artist and His Model by Matisse, 1919, from henrimatisse.org
Three portraits of Laurette 1916-17 from nytimes.com
The author from thetimes.co.uk

Edited, spoilers hidden 11/28/23]

[Dolors · Rating 4 out of 5]

A.S. Byatt draws inspiration from Matisse’s paintings and removes them from the museums and art exhibitions to export his bright colors and bold simplifications to everyday life in the form of three short stories where narrative, visuals and imagination blend effortlessly with the help of her sharp acumen and literary craftsmanship.

In Medusa’s Ankles, ageing and the conflicting desire for rejuvenation is linked with Matisse’s painting “Le Nu Rose”, which in this story hangs on the wall of a beauty saloon. A middle-aged woman and neglected wife listens patiently to the dilemmas of her male hairdresser who is forced to choose between his family life or a passionate affair. Unforeseeable events trigger a chain of reactions that culminate in a histrionic finale that will amuse and sadden the reader in equal terms.

In Art Work, Byatt uses her most pungent and sarcastic style to bring down the clichéd image of artists as a select elite by introducing a pompous painter and his aspiring-writer wife who treat their housemaid condescendingly without realizing that she has secret talents because they have been so immersed in themselves that they miss genuine art even when they have it in front of their noses. “Le Silence Habité des Maison” serves as a frame for this cautionary short tale that will draw a satisfied smile on the face of any reader who sees justice done.

In the closing story The Chinese Lobster, academic snobbiness surprisingly gives way to a moving meditation on mental illness and suicidal tendencies that plague many artists of sensitive natures. Questions are brought up and not fully answered that leave the reader wondering about facts, imagination and past wounds that might explain unacceptable behaviors such as sexual harassment. The painting “Nymphe et faune” presents the story and “La Porte Noire” serves as an epilogue to introduce a new angle to the whole story. Thought-provoking and tantalizing.

Byatt manages to fill the gap between highbrow art and everyday life and makes it accessible to everybody in every place. Artistic charm is not linked to art galleries but to discerning natures, and art is not to be admired from afar but part of the tricky business of navigating the conflicts and dilemmas that heedless and deeply flawed human beings confront over the years. We can’t change the color and tonality of our daily circumstances, but we can choose the glass through which we look. And I have to admit that I quite liked the bright hues and delineated shapes of Byatt’s point of views in these stories.

[Lorna · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Matisse Stories is a book of short stories where each of the people are impacted, inspired and moved by the impressive art works of Henry Matisse, as I am. I have long been an admirer of how Matisse was able to use such bold and vibrant colors while seemingly his subjects were a simple room or a chair or a vase of flowers. In the third and final story, Matisse's comparison that art was like an armchair was discussed with this quotation:

"What I dream of, is an art of balance, of purity, of quietness, without any disturbing subjects, without worry, which may be, for everyone who works with the mind, for the businessman as much as for the literary artist, something soothing, something to calm the brain, something analogous to a good armchair which relaxes him from his bodily weariness. . . ."

Each of these three narratives have been inspired by a painting by Matisse and each of these tales explore how the art of Matisse has profoundly influenced the lives and the art and the use of color and shapes used by these individuals and influenced in myriad ways by Henry Matisse. I find A.S. Byatt an elegant and beautiful writer of literary fiction and this book of short stories displaying the richness of her gorgeous writing was no exception. I will leave you with the words from The Sunday Times (London):

"A.S. Byatt's three-tale sequence hits the imagination's retina with all the vibrant splatter of an exploding paint box. . . Everywhere, scenes sizzle with chromatic intensity."

[Rowena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another wonderful short-story collection from Byatt. As always, her descriptions of everyday life and items are exceptional. Having just visited a Matisse exhibition a couple of months ago, learning more about his paintings and his temperament was very interesting. I had no idea Matisse was considered to be a misogynist, for example. The main theme of this book is of course art, pretty fitting as I consider Byatt to be an artist of words. She's also a very knowledgeable writer and reading these stories really taught me a lot.

[Ubik 2.0 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tutto in meno di 90 pagine…

Esplorando la parte meno nota della bibliografia di Antonia Byatt mi sono imbattuto in questo volumetto che a prima vista mi è sembrato difficile immaginare di valutare trattandosi di un’opera dall’aspetto così esile, una raccolta di tre soli racconti e per di più molto brevi, tanto che il libro presenta le dimensioni di un quaderno!

Avevo fatto i conti senza il talento espressivo e stilistico e l’originalità della scrittrice inglese, che sa manifestarsi anche attraverso una dimensione così ridotta: passato il primo racconto, fulmineo come la crisi di nervi che vi si svolge, il secondo (“Lavoro d’arte”) evidenzia la sottile e intelligente ironia della Byatt e la precisione dei caratteri che pure sottende imprevisti cambi di ruolo e prospettive fra una coppia di artisti inquieti e una singolare donna delle pulizie. In “L’aragosta cinese” infine, dove la scena si svolge interamente fra due persone a un tavolo di ristorante, sono messi in campo molteplici temi e suggerite svariate implicazioni, peraltro straordinariamente premonitrici della nostra attualità, ove si pensi che il testo risale a mezzo secolo fa!

Tutto questo si limiterebbe a confermare l’acutezza, la ricchezza e la profondità dello sguardo della Byatt e il noto talento nel fare interagire i personaggi soprattutto nei dialoghi, ma in questi racconti l’autrice aggiunge una vertiginosa profusione di colori, nei vestiti, nei soprammobili, alle pareti, ovunque; colori descritti con la sensualità e la precisione di un miniaturista e con l’accostamento audace fra di essi proprio di un maestro dei toni caldi e voluttuosi come l’artista cui viene intitolata la raccolta e le cui opere rivestono un ruolo cruciale all’interno di ognuno dei tre racconti, ruolo indiretto nel primo, più esplicitamente decisivo negli altri due.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Byatt's three stories in this collection are all inspired by Matisse works and all address the idea of invisibility as well as importance. The last story addresses the question of being seen or not seen as the class may be.

There are, of course, other themes as well, that deal with gender, agism, and class. At times the stories are very subtle, trusting the reader to pick up on things.

older review
I assigned this book to a reading class. The class was all from the inner city, and they all enjoyed the stories so much so that even the quiet ones discussed them in class. It speaks heavily for Byatt's writing style that her work can connect with students who have such a different background than hers.

[Connie G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Artist Henri Matisse is known for his use of color in his paintings. Author A.S. Byatt uses his art as an inspiration for the three stories in this collection. Her colorful descriptions are as vibrant as his painting as she combines artistic themes with those about the human condition. "Medusa's Ankles" features a woman growing old, and feeling unattractive and neglected. In "Art Work", two married artists fail to recognize the talent that their housekeeper possesses. "The Chinese Lobster" asks what kind of works can be considered to be art, and also touches on mental illness. This collection will be enjoyed by readers who love literary fiction. 3.5 stars.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book of short stories served as my introduction to A.S. Byatt and I loved it! There are three stories and I will write a bit about each, however you will likely be able to tell that Artwork was my absolute favorite.

Medusa's Ankles - takes place in a hairdressing salon and is the shortest story at 36 minutes. The tension gradually builds to an explosive ending. The middle-aged protagonist, Suzanna is raging against growing old. This story is all about her relationship with her hairdresser, Lucien and his role in her life. Standout quote:

"She had had to come back because her hair began to grow old, the ends split, the weight of it broke, a kind of frizzed fur replaced the gloss. Lucien said that curls and waves following the new lines of unevenness would dissimulate [...] short and bouncy was best, and proved it tactfully."

Artwork - takes place mainly in the home of the Denison family and is 1 hour 24 minutes long. Debbie Denison and husband, Robin form a triangle with housekeeper Mrs. Brown and the story spins on their individual relationships with art.

Debbie is described as being the "breadwinner and life manager." Mrs. Brown is her opposite and is described as "that prolific weaver of bright webs." Robin resents Mrs. Brown, however Debbie needs her to be able to keep her life in balance, as she is managing the household, caring for their two children, meeting Robin's needs and desires, balancing their checkbook and working a full-time job.

Byatt's writing is so good she can even make everyday items sound interesting. For example the following passage describes the churning action of a washing machine:

"a kind of splashy mechanical giggle, with a grinding note in it, tossing its wet mass one way, resting and simmering, tossing it the other. A real habitué of this noise will tense him or herself against the coming banshee-scream of the spin cycle accompanied by a drumming tattoo of machine feet scrabbling on the tiles. The dryer is chuntering too...."

Then, there's the wonderful description of the skin of their son who has chicken pox:

"its a wonderfully humped and varied terrain of rosy peaks and hummocks, mostly the pink of those boring little begonias with fleshy leaves, but some are raging into salmon-deeps, with some extinct volcanoes umber and ochre crusts."

The Chinese Lobster - revolves around the discussion of two academics about a student over a meal at a Chinese restaurant and is one hour long. The following passage resonated with me:

"Any two people may be talking to each other at any moment in a civilized way about something trivial or something even complex and delicate and inside each of the two there runs a kind of dark river of unconnected thought secret fear or violence or bliss hoped for or lost which keeps pace with the flow of talk and is neither seen nor heard and at times, one or both of the two catch sight or sound of this movement in himself or herself, or more rarely in the other and its like the quick slope of a waterfall into a pool, like a drop into darkness, the pace changes, the weight of the air, though the talk may run smoothly onwards without a ripple or quiver."

The paintings of Henri Matisse link all three stories which are wonderfully read by Virginia Leishman.

[hawk · Rating 4 out of 5]

loved it! 😊❤


🌈🎨🖼🌈🎨🖼🌈🎨🖼🎨🌈



i really liked this collection of 3 stories, the common thread being something about the artist Matisse and/or his paintings 🙂


1. Medusa's Ankles
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 +
a hairdressers salon, with a Matisse painting on the wall - 'Pink Nude'. the story is told by a regular woman customer, and her comments/commentary - the salon and it's decor, it's owner, changes to that salon over time a microcosm of wider societal change, her hair, her dissatisfaction! 😃😆, and her husband at the very end 😉


2. Artwork
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 +
describes the painting 'Le Silence est Vite des Maisons' - a woman, a child, a vase of flowers, windows behind, trees behind them. black and white, and greyness. the description of a very mundane scene - the washing machine, dryer.. the TV in the other room... we move around the house by sound... until we finally meet the inhabitants.
"the editor of 'a woman's place' is a man" 😃😆😉
(the magazine Debbie writes for)
Mrs Brown who cleans and tidies, their mutual respect and care.
Debbie's husband whose studio takes up the third floor of the house. her love and hate for him.
colour, art 🙂🌈🎨
Mrs Browns knitting 🧶🙂 and Mrs Brown's exhibition!! 😃😁


3. The Chinese Lobster
🌟 🌟 🌟
a restaurant/cafe close to the galleries etc. the familiarity of place 🙂
one member of staff meeting another informally, about a complaint against him.
a feminist critiquing of Matisse. sexism, anorexia amongst students, suicide.
Matisse, light, dark, colour 🌞🌚🌈
I lost track a little towards the end - I think it kinda became a vehicle for some ideas, in which the story and characters became a little lost 🤔



🌟 🌟 🌟 .5



accessed as an RNIB library talking book, well read by Tom Grow 🙂

(the recording made possible by fundraising by a school 🙂)

[Stacey B · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was bc I read Jim Fonseca's terrific review last week that I bought this book.
Not to be redundant, this review will be slim.
"Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder" as is art.
Individual and personal; it's interpretation has many facets.
The author writes about three different women in three individual stories, each having a personal
crises. Where does Matisse fit in?
Byatt wrote such a wonderful book and wowed me with new-found knowledge.

[Ilana (illi69) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three short stories which have Matisses’s art as a common theme. In one of the stories taking place in a hair salon, there is a Matisse poster which coordinates with the décors colour scheme. In the last story, an art student working on her thesis is offended by Matisse’s portrayal of women as objects of desire and rightly or wrongly, accuses her male thesis adviser of sexual assault. I love Byatt’s work. Details meticulously observed, both in the outer visual world, and the inner workings of the human spirit.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Byatt is my favorite author; I reread this book in one morning sitting last week. My memory for individual short stories is pitiful, yet I have never forgotten the first of three stories in this volume, so I focus on it here with a close (re)reading. In “Medusa’s Ankles,” a middle-aged woman goes berserk in a hair salon but it all turns out fine. I remember imagining what that would be like: to let go, to behave badly with no thought for others’ opinions, to act purely on instinct – and for there to be no consequences.

I’d forgotten all the particulars of the event. Susannah, a linguist, is drawn to the salon by the Rosy Nude reproduction she sees through the window. She becomes a reluctant receptacle for her stylist Lucian’s stories, including tales of his wife’s fat ankles and his mistress’ greater appeal. He confides in her his plan to run away. “I don’t want to put the best years of my life into making suburban old dears presentable. I want something more.”

Susannah holds in all her contempt for Lucian and his hip shop redesign until the day he fobs her off on another stylist – even though she’s said she needs an especially careful job this time because she is to appear on TV to accept the Translator’s Medal. When Deirdre is done, Susannah forgets about English politeness and says just what she thinks: “It’s horrible. I look like a middle-aged woman with a hair-do.” (Never mind that that’s exactly what she is.)

In a whirlwind of fury, she trashes the salon. Byatt describes the aftermath, indulging her trademark love of colors: “It was a strange empty battlefield, full of glittering fragments and sweet-smelling rivulets and puddles of venous-blue and fuchsia-red unguents, patches of crimson-streaked foam and odd intense spills of orange henna or cobalt and copper.”

You can just imagine the atmosphere in the salon: everyone exchanging horrified looks and cautiously approaching Susannah as if she’s a dangerous dog. Lucian steps in to reassure her: “We all feel like that, sometimes. Most of us don’t dare. … The insurance’ll pay. Don’t worry. … You’ve done me a good turn in a way.” Maybe he’ll go off with his girlfriend and start a new business, after all. Predictably, the man has made it all about him.

The ironic kicker to this perfect story about middle age and female rage comes after Susannah goes home to a husband we hadn’t heard about yet. “He saw her. (Usually he did not.) ‘You look different. You’ve had your hair done. I like it. You look lovely. It takes twenty years off you. You should have it done more often.’”


“Art Work” briefly, unnecessarily, uses a Matisse painting as a jumping-off point. A bourgeois couple, a painter and magazine design editor, hire Mrs. Brown, a black woman, to clean their house and are flabbergasted when she turns out to be an artist in her own right. “The Chinese Lobster,” the final story, is the only one explicitly about Matisse. An academic dean invites her colleague out to lunch at a Chinese restaurant to discuss a troubled student he’s supervising. This young woman has eating disorders and is doing a portfolio of artwork plus a dissertation on Matisse’s treatment of female bodies. Her work isn’t up to scratch, and now she’s accused her elderly supervisor of sexual harassment. The racial and sexual politics of these two stories don’t quite hold up, though both are well constructed.

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Jonfaith · Rating 5 out of 5]

My glibly tossed five stars register an exquisite afternoon as much as this collection of three jewels from Dame Byatt. All three caught me unexpected. Medusa's Ankle's recalled the lead story in Pulse by Julian Barnes, though I could be mistaken, perhaps I am thinking of The Lemon Table. Oh well the self-awareness was piercing. Art Work is brillaintly realized work, one which may have been a marvelous novel. The Chinese Lobster likewise was transportive, though it was more whispered verse than anything monumental.

[Kelly W · Rating 4 out of 5]

You don't have to be an expert on Matisse or of art theory to understand and appreciate this rich collection of three stories by A.S. Byatt. In each story, Byatt frames a scenario with a Matisse painting in such a way that the story is not about the painting itself, but of the characters and they way life is reflected as if looking through a piece of art. The prose is lush in color and texture. Although art and art history are sprinkled throughout, these subjects aren't forced in a dry way and fall naturally into the plot.

The most interesting approach in each story deals with the characters' views of art--whether they be pretentious, curious, critical, objective, or narrow (and how those views can affect others). In the first, "Medusa's Ankles," an elderly woman sits at her hairstylist as the world flashes before her at an increasingly uncomfortable pace and she tries to grasp fragments of her youth--the art is tied in by the paintings on the salon wall. The second, "Art Work," deals with a household of artists at different levels (this one requires patience to begin with, but once pieces start to fall together it's more gripping). The third, "Chinese Lobster," presents two points of view of a sexual harassment scenario within a university art department.

[Ginger Bensman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Engaging, subtle, and always thought provoking, A. S. Byatt is a literary wizard. I loved these three loosely threaded together Matisse-themed feminist short stories, though maybe not quite as much as her Little Black Book of Stories.

[Sevim Tezel Aydın · Rating 4 out of 5]

Matisse tablolarından esinlenen üç öykü, üçü de güzel…

A.S. Byatt bu öykülerde, çeşitli krizlerle boğuşan üç kadını ve onların çevresinde gelişen olayları anlatmış. Sanatın bireyin iç dünyasına ve gündelik hayata etkileri, kadın-erkek ilişkileri, sınıfsal farklılıklar üzerine kurulan bu öyküleri çok sevdim...

[Deb Omnivorous Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

This little book is one I picked up on impulse and I am very glad I gave in to the impulse. Three short stories whose only point of similarity is that they each have a mention - either brief or extensive - of the artist Henri Matisse.

In each story a woman in central to the plot; in the first a middle aged academic goes to a hair dresser based on the fact that there is a Matisse ( Le Nu Rose) hanging inside and we then follow her ongoing relationship with the salon and it's proprietor, with the salon as a metaphor for her life (or so it seemed to me).

In the second a woman runs her life, family, job and artist husband with the assistance of the formidable Mrs Brown, who ends up having a secret....

In the third a woman waits at her favourite restaurant to meet a visiting academic against whom a complaint has been made by a student.

These are sketches of the backdrops for some beautiful descriptive writing; characters that come across as both complex and complete with their own interesting inner life. The plus for me were the links to Matisse, but the gorgeous exploration of colour and image, especially in the last story made the reading experience much like looking at a painting.

[SarahC · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Matisse Stories are a collection of Byatt’s modern stories, which I have set my mind to investigating throughout the coming year. This is a short volume of stories that are all influenced in some way by the art of French artist Henri Matisse, developer of Fauvism. [When I hear mention of Matisse, The Goldfish painting comes to mind, the only framed print of his work that I own and see regularly.]

Byatt incorporates ideas of Matisse’s art, but they aren’t “themes” of the stories. The stories aren’t structured in that sort of guided way. The stories themselves shine beyond any sort of scheme like that. They really tell of what the passion for art means to us and the way we live within each others’ lives in spite of the labels of our actual relationships. Each story tells of the way the color of each of our lives essentially bleeds into the life of a person around us and/or influenced by us. In the first story there seems to be a full, equal realization of this. In the second story the characters remain still baffled a bit by each other. In the last story, the stronger subjects of individual grief, fear, and honesty toward art itself override the coming to terms of relationships.

Byatt’s work leaves me in admiration. She is one of the most talented writers today in her ability to combine the elements of life into her stories. One of the best modern writers, her stories are so crafted as to never seem to announce, “look how modern and how clever we all are.” Byatt seems to understand that the story of people transcends the setting and the time period. She concentrates on the moment, the memory, the actually telling of something of the small thoughts of the characters. You are never left puzzled and in the dark on her intentions. She is a writer who shares with the reader the consequence and significance of what she is writing. So apparently a writer can still do this in the modern world and NOT leave the reader muddled AND STILL be a brilliant master of a writer.

I recommend these highly.

[Cecily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, varied, intriguing, subtle. Each vaguely inspired by a Matisse painting. Probably worth 3.5*.

[Ygraine]

being my mother's daughter means being regularly prescribed art work for my maladies. and she is correct !

(also colour is IN for 2024)

[Blair Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

“It is possible to feel love and hate quite quietly, side by side, if one is a self-contained person.”
–A.S. Byatt

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

A ritual Japan celebrates every year is blossom viewing. Before it really becomes warm, everyone is daydreaming of a slow wave of cherry blossoms blushing from the south to the north of Japan, in the wake of the gradual thermal tsunami known as Spring.

One can imagine that it is not the Japanese contemplating the cherry trees--but the trees themselves, opening their trillions of little floral eyes to take in the Japanese--that had long ago instituted the ritual of viewing the blossoms. In ancient times these blossoms would behold celebrated court beauties arriving in kimonos, with musicians playing flutes and drums, with handsome boys hanging brightly lit lanterns to glow amid the boughs as everyone quaffs their sake amid a tumult of glances, gossip and music. The blossoms would look out on nobles arriving by boat, with servants, musicians and courtesans waiting on their pleasure behind gauzy curtains, as illustrious Buddhist monks sitting on the prow become ever more drunk and prattle ever more loudly about Zen, as the moon climbs ever higher in the sky and the tumultuous hullabaloo of drunken voices reaches a crescendo, with everyone shouting into the face of someone else in order to be heard above all the rest.

The blossoms would see that after the crowd thins and then disappears and the moon sets and the eastern sky begins to blush and the dawn breeze stirs--that neither they nor the moon have been truly appreciated for what they truly are. They would feel, in short, that the moon and themselves have been somehow abandoned. And thus each blossom watches sadly as the moon sets and disconsolate and trembling brother and sister blossoms shake themselves loose from the branches of this fleeting and insensitive world, abandoning themselves in flights of sheer oblivion to sail in swirling flurries and dizzying eddies through the indifferent air.

Permeating this ritual is mono no aware the fundamental Japanese aesthetic category. It has been translated as 'an awareness of the Ah-ness of things' and as 'a certain sadness that arises when contemplating the evanesence of beauty.'

This collection of stories, particularly the second, is guided by a similar meditation. The difference is that Byatt's characters lack the Buddhist acceptance of ageing that comes from a life of celebrating mono no aware not only in blossom viewing, but also as the underlying aesthetic category in Japanese literature.

What I find fascinating is cultural differences in such realms. Although Byatt is adept at conveying a certain sensibility towards growing older, this collection would have been far more captivating had she contrasted that sensibility with other, more accepting, ones.

[Deea · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book reminds me of Murakami's volume of short stories called "After the Quake". Just like all the stories in that volume are not about the quake, and this phenomenon is just the background common theme to the stories, Byatts stories are not about Matisse, nor do they involve the painter in any way. What they have in common is Matisse's works of art: in the first story, a woman chooses her hairdresser's salon after she sees a Matisse painting inside (The Rosy Nude), the second story is portraying in words what the painting "The Silence that Lives in Houses" is meant to convey and the consequences of such a situation and, in the third, a general depiction of Matisse's art helps three characters who hadn't known each other well be able to relate somehow to one another.

I really liked the first and the third stories, but the meaning is so subtle that if you don't read the stories carefully, you might not get their hidden flavor. I think this is a good book and the subjects of the stories are really worth pondering on, but it lacks the force to make the reader want to recommend it further. The author tries to make some powerful statements, but in not a very strong way and the meaning might escape the reader who doesn't get involved in what he reads.

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not Byatt's most substantial work, but this is a deliciously witty and erudite set of three stories inspired by Matisse's painting.

[Brenda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Three stories, each inspired by Matisse artworks.

Byatt's use of language is so sumptuous, you want to take a huge bite out of her words and eat them. A fantastic, hypnotizing read.

[Fiona MacDonald · Rating 3 out of 5]

I never forgot A.S. Byatt's stunning novel 'Possession' and had hoped that her short stories were going to leave me similarly bowled over.

There were 3 stories, all based on the paintings of Matisse. The first is my very favourite, all set in a hairdresser's shop. The other 2 held less of my attention, but they were still fun to read. I would probably need more than 3 of her stories to read before I can make an executive decision...

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Earlier this year I was reading a blog where Australian author Kate Forsyth listed and shared her reviews for the books she had read in March, 2016.

One review caught my eye: The Matisse stories by A.S. Byatt.

While I had only ever read one A.S. Byatt book before (The Children's Book), I felt this was a book I wanted to read, and as luck would have it, I found this copy at a second hand market.

The physical book is adorable. Small, hardcovered, with a paper slipcover, in lovely blue and featuring Matisse prints. I could not resist.

Unlike Kate Forsyth, I adored the first story: Medusa's ankles. A short story of a middle aged woman who chooses a hairdresser because she likes the decor and the Matisse print in the foyer.

There is something to be said about reading the right book at the right time.

And, it seems I am not the only one who thought Medusa's ankles a great story too. It's being produced as a short film.

If I am really honest, I greatly enjoyed all three stories for various reasons. And I have now gone on to be fascinated by reviews of the book. I particularly liked this description of the stories:
Within their pleasing surface lies the memorable sharpness of an imagination thoroughly attuned to pain.

Art, feminism, aging and morality, relationships and academia all feature in these short stories.

[Anie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm always torn with A.S. Byatt. I absolutely adore some of her work; I'm looking forward to revisiting Ragnarök some day soon, and The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye is one of the most gorgeous things I've ever read. On the other hand, Possession? Couldn't even get halfway through. The Matisse Stories were somewhat in between for me. Not exciting, perhaps, but engaging in the way that Byatt is engaging: She has a talent for taking small, unexceptional things and getting into their depths. Of course, she also has a talent for creating characters that are so god-damned pretentious that I kind of want to strange them (please see: why I couldn't finish Possession). There's a bit of that in The Matisse Stories, but it's done in such a way that you and the author both get to laugh a little bit at the way these characters are lost in their own pretensions.

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Byatt is probably my favorite author. Everything she writes is so elegant and an advertisement for the depth and breadth of her knowledge. But these stories are my favorite. Especially the one about the middle aged woman at the hair salon. Byatt is an expert at conveying the insecurities of a woman who feels her looks are starting to go (which are really everyone's insecurities) and gets lost in the fantastic tales of her flamboyant hair stylist. Color and texture are important in all the stories and I love how you can just see and feel them through her words. Everyone should read at least one Byatt novel or collection.

[Fatma Burçak · Rating 5 out of 5]

A.S.Byatt sevdiğim yazarlardan biri. Kendisi şair, yazar, eleştirmen. 1990 yılında 'Tutku' isimli romanıyla Man Booker kazanmış.
Matisse Öyküleri, isminden de anlaşılacağı üzere ressam Henri Matisse'in eserlerini odağına alarak anlatılan üç öyküden oluşuyor. Öykülerin bir başka özelliği de temalarının kadınlara ait durumlar olması. Her öyküde farklı sosyal konumlardaki kadınların açmazları ve çevrelerindeki kadınlarla erkeklere bakış açılarını görebilirsiniz. Elbette her öykünün içine yerleşmiş Matisse tabloları da okumaya renk katıyor.
Öykülerin içindeki bazı paragraflar uzun gelebilir ama öyküye dokusunu ve rengini veren o paragraflar önemli. Sindirerek okunması gereken öyküler.