Medusa’s Ankles: Selected Stories

by A.S. Byatt, David Mitchell (Introduction), Esther Wane (Narrator)

* Duration: 13 hours *

A ravishing, luminous selection of short stories from the prize-winning imagination of A.S. Byatt. With an introduction by David Mitchell, best-selling author of 'Cloud Atlas'.

Mirrors shatter at the hairdresser's when a middle-aged client explodes in rage. Snow dusts the warm body of a princess, honing it into something sharp and frosted. Summer sunshine flickers on the face of a smiling child who may or may not be real.

'MEDUSA'S ANKLES' celebrates the very best of A.S. Byatt's short fiction, carefully selected from a lifetime of writing. Peopled by artists, poets, and fabulous creatures, the stories blaze with creativity and color. From ancient myth to a British candy factory, from a Chinese restaurant to a Mediterranean swimming pool, from a Turkish bazaar to a fairy-tale palace, Byatt transports her listeners beyond the veneer of the ordinary - even beyond the gloss of the fantastical - to places rich and strange and wholly unforgettable.


©1990, 2021 A.S. Byatt (P)2021 Random House Audio

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Gothic, Contemporary, Literary Fiction

13 pages, Audible Audio

First published September 1, 2021

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

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve long considered Byatt my favourite author, and have read all of her published short story collections before. One (The Matisse Stories) I even reread last year. So when approaching this chronological selection of 18 stories, I skipped the couple I’d read recently, even though that includes perhaps my favourite stand-alone story of all time (“Medusa’s Ankles”), plus a few more that I’d read before. This time around, I found I wasn’t as interested in the historical stories in the Angels and Insects or Possession vein – chiefly “Precipice-Encurled,” a long story about Robert Browning from her first collection – and instead focused on stories where fantasy or horror breaks into everyday life, and writerly or metafictional ones.

As David Mitchell notes in his introduction, Byatt’s range, from fairy tales to historical realism, is almost overwhelming; it’s hard to do it justice in a short review, but I’ll highlight five brilliant stories beyond the title one. “The July Ghost,” an early story, is another that has stuck with me over the years. It’s a straight-up ghost story but also a tale within a tale being recounted by a man at a party, and blends sex and death in a creepy way. “Racine and the Tablecloth” pits a clever boarding school girl and her literature professor against each other in a tacit psychological conflict. “Who won, you will ask, Emily or Miss Crichton-Walker, since the Reader is mythical and detached?”

“A Lamia in the Cévennes,” about a seductive snake-spirit living in a painter’s swimming pool, provides a delicious lick of magic. I’m surprised I didn’t remember “Raw Material,” as it was a favourite on this reread. A working-class author teaches his creative writing students to write what they know and avoid melodrama. Yet most of them craft over-the-top graphic tales of torture and revenge. Only an unassuming octogenarian follows his instructions, spinning lovingly meticulous accounts of polishing stoves and washing laundry by hand in the old days. He is captivated by her stories, reading them aloud to an unappreciative class and even entering them into a competition. But the old woman’s life holds a sordid surprise. It’s mind-blowing how Byatt turns all our expectations for this story on their head and forces us to question nostalgia and the therapeutic value of writing fiction.

Five of the late stories were originally printed in other publications and had not previously been collected. Of these, I most liked “Dolls’ Eyes” (2013), which is available as a Comma Singles e-book and was in the anthology The New Uncanny. A schoolteacher who lives in a house full of dolls welcomes a new fellow teacher to be her lodger and trusts her with her love and her dolls, only to be betrayed and call down vengeance. “Sea Story,” which appeared in the Guardian, is a thoroughly depressing closer about the persistence of plastic (but how about that last line?!).

One of the things I most admire about Byatt is her use of colour, and visual detail in general. As Mitchell puts it, “It is not easy to think of another writer with so painterly and exact an eye for the colours, textures and appearances of things. The visual is in constant dialogue with the textual.” Witness in the autobiographical “Sugar” the descriptions of boiled sweets being made almost like blown glass in a grandfather’s factory, or the colourful minerals participating in the metamorphosis in “A Stone Woman.”

If you’re new to Byatt’s work, picking a handful of stories from this collection would be a great way of trying out her style and figuring out which of her full-length books you might like to read. Fans of Margaret Atwood, Julian Barnes and Michèle Roberts are specially invited to the feast.

Some favourite lines:

“Such wonder, such amazement, are the opposite, the exact opposite, of boredom, and many people only know them after fear and loss. Once known, I believe, they cannot be completely forgotten; they cast flashes and floods of paradisal light in odd places and at odd times.”

“the world is full of light and life, and the true crime is not to be interested in it. You have a way in. Take it. It may incidentally be a way out, too, as all skills are.”


Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.


[Notes to self on the origins of each story:

#1-4 Sugar and Other Stories

#5-6 The Matisse Stories

#7-8 The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye

#9-11 Elementals

#12 “Heavenly Bodies” (1998) from Sunday Times / limited edition printing

#13-14 Little Black Book of Stories

#15 “The Narrow Jet” (2005) from The Paris Review

#16 “Dolls’ Eyes” (2013), Comma Singles e-book and the anthology The New Uncanny

#17 “The Lucid Dreamer” (2011) from the New Statesman

#18 “Sea Story” (2013) from the Guardian]

[G.G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Mitchell, in his lucid introduction to this collection of stories, describes Byatt's style as "ornate, cerebral, 'Byatty'" (p.ix) and the stories themselves as "magpie-minded, ideas-studded, plot-driven" (p.xi). Mitchell is right: these stories are not molded from observable reality captured in language; reading Byatt is not like reading, say, Mavis Gallant.

And yet even the most fantastic of Byatt's stories--"A Stone Woman," for example, about a woman who very slowly turns into stone--are so precisely imagined that they might as well be real.

She had wondered how her tendons and musculature would function. She thought she could feel the roll of polished stone in stony cup as she moved her pelvis and hips, raised her knees, and swung her rigid arms.... She noticed that her sense of smell had changed, and was sharper. She could smell the rain in the thick cloud blanket. [...] Big drops splashed on her sharp nose; she licked them from stiffening lips between crystalline teeth, with a still flexible tongue tip, and tasted skywater, mineral and delicious. She stood there and let the thick streams of water run over her body and down inside her flimsy garments, streaking her carnelian nipples and adamantine wrists. The lightening came in sheets of metal sheen. The thunder crashed in the sky and the surface of the woman crackled and creaked in sympathy. (pp.367-68)

The eighteen stories span Byatt's career: the earliest from 1982, the latest from 2013. There are artists and models, architects and visionaries, teachers and students; for me, the stories of other worlds ("Cold") and of creatures from other worlds who appear in our own ("A Lamia in the Cévennes," "The Narrow Jet") are the most satisfying. I advise savoring their brilliance slowly, one at a time!

[Lucija · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just. So. BORING. How? Why?

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Any two people may be talking to each other, at any moment, in a civilised 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, of 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 will catch sight or sound of this movement, in himself, or herself, or, more rarely, in the other. And it is like the quick slip 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.

Gerda Himmelblau is back in the knot of quiet terror which has grown in her private self like a cancer over the last few years.  (from 'The Chinese Lobster', in Medusa's Ankles, p.149)

I keep telling you, my readers, that I tend not to read short stories, and that is because so few of those that come my way pique my interest in characterisation.  But there are exceptions, and A S Byatt's short stories in this new collection are so satisfying, her topics so thought-provoking, and her writing (as you can see from that excerpt) is so superb that I have no hesitation in describing these stories as exemplars of the craft.

'The Chinese Lobster', is one of a number of stories as cunningly titled as the titular 'Medusa's Ankles.'  Like many of those in the collection, it shows Byatt unafraid to tackle awkward issues.

Dr Himmelblau, Dean of Women Students, chooses the restaurant for her meeting with Professor Perry Diss because it's convenient to their workplace in Bloomsbury. Possibly infringing university procedures, she has elected to have an informal meeting to discuss a student's complaint about the behaviour of Professor Diss.  She shares the student's badly spelt and incoherent tirade with the professor, who responds with his version of events. She should be failed and sent on her way, he says, and her accusations are a fantasy.  The disputed truth of events is not the issue.  It becomes the mental health of the student, and whether supporting her should take precedence over her unsatisfactory dissertation (which is meant to be a feminist critique of the way Matisse used the female body, though the student, it seems, knows nothing about Matisse). The excerpt above brings depth to the characterisation of these two professionals for whom academic integrity matters. Their internal baggage, mutually inferred, brings the reader to a reassessment of all the characters in this exquisite, profound short story.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/09/19/m...

[Geertje · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even though I did not enjoy every single story in this collection, I stand in awe of Byatt's skills and the breadth of her work.

[Susan Chapek · Rating 4 out of 5]

". . . she liked glass in general, for its paradoxical nature, translucent as water, heavy as stone, invisible as air, solid as earth. Blown with human breath in a furnace of fire."
--The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye

This can serve as my review of the whole story collection.
Actually, it can serve as my review of all of Byatt's writing.

[Eleanor]

Byatt’s most famous novel, Possession, holds a really special place in my heart, and I got that plus her whole Frederica Quartet signed by her when she came to speak at my college. She was an absolute delight in person, too: both tartly clever and generous, quite a rare combination. I decided to read this selection of her stories very slowly, only one or two per day, and so it took me the better part of a month. Though her novels are set in our world, there’s always more than a tinge of the fantastical about her approach to storytelling – from the cadences of her sentences to her fascination with texture, colour, and light to a recurring interest in transformations, both physical and emotional. These stories really bring that home: some are true fables, like “Cold” (about a coddled princess whose unusual physical needs mirror her emotional ones and whose marriage becomes a success in direct proportion to her husband figuring out how to meet those needs) or “Dragons’ Breath” (a weird little story in which a village is overtaken by dragons who are more geological than reptilian). Some just have a fable’s shape and flavour, like the title story, in which a “middle-aged woman with a hairdo” puts up with her hairdresser’s selfish thoughtlessness for years and finally snaps, or “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye”, a novelette where the djinn is both absolutely real and representative of something else, some elusive freedom that the protagonist, Gillian Perholt, is able to achieve in middle age, despite the social narrative that suggests she should be considered irrelevant now. That’s another thing Byatt is deeply interested by: the ways in which women are freed and/or confined. She’s not simplistic: she knows mid-20th-century feminism has opened doors, but she also suggests that the barriers to equality aren’t less real for being subtler, or less visible, than they were to historical women. “Racine and the Tablecloth” is an amazing example of her working through this, a story about a schoolgirl being discouraged from university – and fighting that discouragement, but maybe losing some other, intangible battle along the way – that made me better understand several people that I actually know. A few late entries, “The Narrow Jet” and “Raw Material”, might have been my favourites. One is about two elderly gentlemen, possibly Victorian, building a fountain as a kind of final hurrah, and juxtaposes their project with the experiences of an enigmatic and possibly mythical creature who lives in the mud of the pond they’re building in; it’s lovely, funny, bittersweet. The other is a brilliant story about writing that ends with a horrendous, unexpected twist and forced me to think about the ethics of storytelling in a really concrete way, and how we all engage in it just by existing in the world, making up details and filling in blanks about most of the people we encounter daily.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A.S Byatt's story collection entitled Medusa's Ankles is a mystical journey through the worlds of the characters that are portrayed in the stories. There are 18 stories including Medusa's Ankles, Sugar, Summer Ghost, Precipice Encurled and Racine and the Tablecloth. Many require re-reading or suspending understanding so as to permeate the surreal landscapes with each story. These stores are beautifully written and will leave the reader with a taste for other works, notably, The Children's Book, Little Black Book of Stories and Possession.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Worth reading for "Raw Material" alone

"But it was also hard to imagine all this tenacious sense of self, all this complexity of knowledge and battling, force and curiosity becoming nothing. What is a man, what is a man’s soul?"

[Em]

I enjoyed this a lot. Particularly 'Cold' and 'The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye'

[Tiff · Rating 3 out of 5]

as always thoroughly grossed out by most of these but that's kind of the point lololol

byatt a writer to stick your nose so close to the skin it shows the pores

[Chloe Coulson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Peculiar and monstrous.

[BethFishReads · Rating 3 out of 5]

More like a 3.75.

A nice sampling of Byatt's work, though not all the pieces held up over time. Many are based on myth or fairy tales, several involve stories within stories. Themes involve love, self-image, motherhood and loss of children, marriage, and art. Lots of literary references.

If you've never read Byatt before, this would be a good place to start.

The audiobook was nicely performed by Esther Wane. For my full audiobook thoughts, see AudioFile magazine.

[T P Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amazing collection of amazingly varied short stories. They range from the realistic to fables to fairy tales. All are well told and hold the interest. There's a dark tinge to the fairy tales but they're none the less impressive for that.

[Alexis · Rating 3 out of 5]

- the writing was admittedly beautiful. however, i think that many of the stories were very long winded and sometimes the vocabulary that made it so elaborate also made it very stuffy.
- literally at the end i was pushing myself to finish and i definitely didn't read as in detail as i was supposed to - it was mostly skimming
- favorite stories: the july ghost, racine and the tablecloth, the djinn in the nightingale's eye, cold
- cold really spoke to me because i loved how instead of trying to change the princess, the prince accepted her true nature and just adapted instead. goes to show the give and take in a relationship and between people. also finding the one person that truly understands you as opposed to those that claim to love you but continue on with their prejudices.
- don't know if this was necessarily the point but i saw that a lot of these separate stories were interconnected. for example, the chinese lobster mentioned a french phrase from matisse that was mentioned in a later story. all of the stories had some type of natural element, especially about aging and death (more specifically, the body wanting to return to its natural state). this was especially seen in medusa's ankles, the djinn in the nightingale's eye, sea story, and a stone woman

[Jemma · Rating 4 out of 5]

The wonderful thing about short story collections which come entirely from one author is that you get to immerse yourself in the world of their brain in a way that a standalone novel can't quite permit. You get to see, in their multiple mentions of a particular painting title from Matisse's oeuvre or the recurrent theme of artists regarding their craft or academics navigating their field, what occupies them and interests them creatively. You get to know their sensibilities, their vocabulary, their tastes. Medusa's Ankles is rife with so many fascinating concepts, both outlandishly fantastical and incredibly ordinary, and in their execution, so many glittering, exciting, special words, words chosen because they are beautiful and strange and perfectly fitted to the space in the text which they occupy, which was created for their occupation. It's the kind of book where you love it so much you want to savor it forever, the way you hear of people freezing slices of their wedding cake. 

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Byatt has been one of my favourite authors ever since I was introduced to her work with Virgin in the Garden. I had read many of these stories before in previous collections so the frisson of recollection was added to the pleasure of entering the worlds she creates with such aplomb.

As always, the depth and breadth of her intellect is on display. Many stories are based on mythology and others have quirky characters. Some, including the title story Medusa's Ankles, dramatise the frustrations of motherhood while others make the reader feel grief or joy through the characters and situations Byatt creates. She uses her imagination and her extraordinary vocabulary to full effect. If you like short stories, this is a collection to savour.

[Medusa · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.4 on the hard curve. There are some excellent stories here, some powerful observations carefully made in finely wrought prose, but there is also a fair bit of the overwrought and under-felt that makes some of the stories feel like literary tchotchkes. One at times feels one has entered a dusty museum of beautifully made but often uninteresting objects; once the initial wonder of the craftsmanship wears off one realizes that craftsmanship without more may not be enough. I’m still glad I read this and I do recommend it for slow sipping. The stories “Medusa’s Ankles” and “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” are outstanding.

[Natalie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love short stories and there are some within MEDUSA’S ANKLES that I really enjoyed. But, there were others that were bored me making it difficult to pick up the book.

For the stories I didn’t like, they seemed to be overly long without much depth. I kept asking myself, ‘what’s happening now?’ I felt like I wasn’t understanding what Byatt intended for me to really appreciate what she was trying to accomplish.

If you’re a fan of short stories, I’d recommend you give this a try and tell me what I am missing.

Big thank you to Knopf for the gifted copy!

[Lee · Rating 1 out of 5]

1 star is generous. Byatt is either a terrible writer or I just don't "get it". My bet is the former. This book was a waste of paper, which is tragic from an environmental point of view, but was also a waste of words which is arguably the greater tragedy. Put a pillow over this book, press down then toss it in the fireplace. At least then you'll get something useful out of it and the trees consumed in this book's production will at least not have died in vain.

[JKC · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a difference you can tell between casual reading and literature. You know that is the difference with this author right away. This is an author of stories with deep intention and careful construction. In many cases, (I don't know all) they are feminist stories. These are stories that stay with you - the way she takes you into the emotions of the protagonists, their insecurity, embarrassment, anger, is very genuine and profoundly insightful.

[Rena · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have reluctantly finished reading the wonderful, light-filled beauty that is this collection of short stories. The language sings, the imagery is bright and horizon-widening, the stories are surprising yet inevitable, and the perspectives are often from that of an unattached middle-aged woman. I don’t know if I’ve ever read anything like it.

I wish I’d taken notes as I went along; it's too late now. But with or without notes, these stories will forever float in my mind and glow golden.

[LillyBooks · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think A. S. Byatt is one of the strongest modern English writers but this collection of short stories didn’t do it for me. Several of the tales are what I would call rumination or character studies, not full arc-shaped tales, and one has to be in the mood for such a thing. They are well-written, of course, but just not what I was looking for.

[Sarah Faulkner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite a mixed bag for me. There were certain stories that totally captured my imagination and others that were utter drudgery to get through. Some quite bizarre and a couple at the end verging on horror. The longest, “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” should not have been included, in my opinion, as it’s a full novella by itself. Others were more typical short story length.

[Lisa Montgomery · Rating 4 out of 5]

At nearly 500 pages long, Medusa's Ankles provides the reader a variety of short fiction pieces that explore the unexplainable. I particularly like "The July Ghost."
What I enjoy best about these types of books is I am not required to keep turning the page for what happens next. I can read several stories, move onto a different book and come back to the other stories when I am ready.

[Lee-Ellen Macon · Rating 3 out of 5]

A creative visual storyteller. Great read for young female artists. Recommending this book to my eldest daughter, age 31. I’m probably not going to read anything else by this author. I did find the stories unique and unforgettable.

[Anne]

Great for the A.S. Byatt mega-fans like me, but not all together her best work. Still, very interesting to see her fiddle with her various preoccupations, interests, and experiences (aging, ghosts, the loss of a child, eldritch creatures, nature/the annihilation of nature) in different ways.

[Kay Slater · Rating 4 out of 5]

good! shocked to discover the new tilda swinton/idris elba movie is literally an adaption of “the djinn in the nightingale,” the longest story in the collection…& it was done rly well! fave story was “cold” ❄️

[Woolfhead · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not every story is a masterpiece, but they are all fascinating, like the various types of minerals erupting from the skin of the eponymous “Stone Woman.” My predilection for fairy tales and delight in crisp, smart writing makes this a five-star read for me.

[Lucie Hemmings · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this short stories collection and it was good, enjoyable and wonderful because half the stories I enjoyed. It is good to reading in spring and summer because some stories base in spring or summer. If you like reading short stories and you will enjoy this book.