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A review by deea_bks
The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye by A.S. Byatt
4.0
This volume has 5 stories: first 2 I didn't read anymore as they were inserted in Possession (and although I don't remember exactly how to grade them, I remember what they were about), a short story about the deeds of an elder sister from a family with 3 daughters, a short story about the breath of a dragon and a story occupying more than half of the volume (The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye).
The story from the title is amazingly good. It is only one story but it contains several other stories. Remember the Arabian Nights? Not only does this story have its structure somehow, but it also borrowed its charm. Our hero gets to make wishes in a modern world and they are granted. Her wishes are not for prosperity or happy forever-afters, but for solving issues that she has to deal with in the modern world. Byatt confronts old and modern with great literary ability, magic and real, Western ideas with Eastern ideas. She talks about fate and choice, about predestination and freedom, about the existence of uncanninness in our daily lives whether we accept it or not.
This last story is a modern fairy tale and in the meantime a thorough analysis of classic fairy tales. Byatt tries to make a sense of "happy-ever-afters" as modern man cannot stop at that anymore: that "happy-ever-after" is just a moment in time after which comes another:
Turkey as seen through Byatt's eyes is a land of magic: her descriptions of Topkapi and the Grand Bazaar, as well as the stories told to accompany random objects seen within, and the stories from the Djinn earlier releases from bottles he was imprisoned in contribute to create a wonderful realm where all stories come alive. I wish I had read this story first and then see Istanbul...maybe I would have seen it with different eyes!
If this story alone had made the whole volume of stories, I would have given it 5 stars, but it doesn't. So, I will only praise it in words and say that together with Stone Woman (a story from another volume written by Byatt) are way better than Possession (and I gave this one 5 stars). Hats off to Dame Byatt!
The story from the title is amazingly good. It is only one story but it contains several other stories. Remember the Arabian Nights? Not only does this story have its structure somehow, but it also borrowed its charm. Our hero gets to make wishes in a modern world and they are granted. Her wishes are not for prosperity or happy forever-afters, but for solving issues that she has to deal with in the modern world. Byatt confronts old and modern with great literary ability, magic and real, Western ideas with Eastern ideas. She talks about fate and choice, about predestination and freedom, about the existence of uncanninness in our daily lives whether we accept it or not.
The emotion we feel in fairy-tales when the characters are granted their wishes is a strange one. We feel the possible leap of freedom - I can have what I want - and the perverse certainty that this will change nothing; that Fate is fixed.
This last story is a modern fairy tale and in the meantime a thorough analysis of classic fairy tales. Byatt tries to make a sense of "happy-ever-afters" as modern man cannot stop at that anymore: that "happy-ever-after" is just a moment in time after which comes another:
In fairy tales, said Gilian, those wishes that are granted and are not malign, or twisted towards destruction, tend to lead to a condition of beautiful stasis, more like a work of art than the drama of Fate. It is as though the fortunate has stepped off the hard road into an unchanging landscape where it is always spring and no winds blow. Alladin's genie gives him a beautiful palace, and as long as this palace is subject to Fate, various magicians move it violently around the landscape, build it up and cause it to vanish. But at the end, it goes into stasis: into the pseudo-eternity of happy-ever-after. When we imagine happy-ever-after we imagine works of art: a family photograph on a sunny day, a Gainsborough lady and her children in an English meadow under a tree, an enchanted castle in a snowstorm of feather in a glass dome.
Turkey as seen through Byatt's eyes is a land of magic: her descriptions of Topkapi and the Grand Bazaar, as well as the stories told to accompany random objects seen within, and the stories from the Djinn earlier releases from bottles he was imprisoned in contribute to create a wonderful realm where all stories come alive. I wish I had read this story first and then see Istanbul...maybe I would have seen it with different eyes!
If this story alone had made the whole volume of stories, I would have given it 5 stars, but it doesn't. So, I will only praise it in words and say that together with Stone Woman (a story from another volume written by Byatt) are way better than Possession (and I gave this one 5 stars). Hats off to Dame Byatt!