Fascination: Stories

Fascination: Stories

One of the most beguiling storytellers on either side of the Atlantic delivers a luminous new collection whose 14 stories are a series of variations on the theme of love–and its shady cousin lust. A film director’s journal becomes an unintended chronicle of his deepening and ruinous obsession with a leading lady (“Notebook No. 9”). While flying business class, a well-behaved English architect feels the chill onset of an otherworldly visitation that will shatter his family and career (“A Haunting”). An unhappy young boy, neglected by both his father and adulterous mother, finds an unexpected friend in an elderly painter (“Varengeville”). Wise, unsettling, humane, and endlessly surprising, Fascination lives up to its title on every page, while confirming William Boyd’s stature as a writer of incandescent talent. "A masterwork. . . . [Boyd is] one of the finest authors of our time." — Forth Worth Star-Telegram “Brilliant. . . . Burns with the kind of artistry that turns a piece of short fiction into a work of imagination that expands beyond the boundaries of the page. . . [Boyd’s] breadth and depth and control are simply breathtaking.” — San Francisco Chronicle “Lovely. . . . Elegant. . . . [These stories] deal not simply with art vs. life but with the terrible demands that art makes upon the artist.” — The Washington Post "Deeply moving. . . . The insights arrived at in Boyd's stories are experienced rather than merely witnessed. They strike us deep, and they stick." — The Boston Globe "The stories are perfect…Suffused with an understanding of love, desire, and emotional incompetence.” –M. John Harrison, the Guardian “A virtuoso range of techniques, Boyd shows here just what he is capable of…The resonance and impact of past events on present lives, and a sense of yearning for love or completion, permeate these perfectly formed snapshots of life at its most mystifying.” –Ross Gilfillan, The Daily Mail “Boyd’s remarkable, and almost wholly consistent, gift is to convince us of the roundness, the existence of his characters from the very first sentence.” –Erica Wagner, The Times “Short stories by William Boyd are an occasional treat…For those who enjoy what might loosely be called canapé fiction — delicious little morsels that whet the appetite but never sate it — Fascination is a must-read book. Every one of the 16 stories has the patina of craftsmanship…The writing transcends cleverness…An impressively sophisticated offering from a writer whose charms never wane. –David Robson, The Sunday Telegraph “Sly and consistently entertaining…Boyd uses the artistic methods of the cinematographer…but he twists them to his own ends…This collection demonstrates Boyd’s versatility as well as his virtuosity. He is as much at home writing about nineteenth-century Vienna as he is twentieth century Cape Cod. –Sebastian Shakespeare, Literary Review A new collection of stories by the internationally acclaimed author of "Any Human Heart ("the finest storyteller of his generation" -"Chicago Tribune). In "Notebook No. 9," a film director's journal becomes an unintentional record of his obsessive love for his leading lady and the slow destruction of their relationship. In "Beulah Berlin, an A--Z," a performance artist, longing for stability and order, reveals the details of her chaotic life through her comments on such varied subjects as angst, hay fever, photography, baby names, sonnets, and tobacco. In "Fantasia on a Favorite Waltz," a prostitute finds an unexpected friend in a young man who plays piano in a brothel. In "Adult Video," we see a man's life in film format-rewinding to his years as a struggling student at Oxford, fast-forwarding to his dreams of success as a writer, and watching the present unfold as he proposes to his future wife for all the wrong reasons. Exploring the ways a life can be dominated by a need for love and the torments that arise when love is misplaced or denied, these stories confirm William Boyd's reputation as a master of the art. "From the Hardcover edition. William Boyd is the author of eight novels, three collections of short stories, and twelve screenplays that have been filmed. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Whitbread Award for Best First Novel, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. He lives in London and southwest France. Springtime in Oxford is vulgar, anyway, but something about this particular spring in Oxford is having me on. Really, these cherry trees are absurd. One wonders if just quite so many flowers are necessary. It is almost as if the cherry trees on the Woodstock Road are trying to prove something--some sort of floral brag, swanking to the other, less advanced vegetation. Very Oxford in a way. Could I work this observation into the novel? "Only in Oxford do the cherry trees try too hard." Good opening for the Oxford sequence? M