Sugar and Other Stories eBook Í Paperback È dogsalonbristol

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Sugar and Other StoriesIons the dizzying abyss of loss and the elaborate memories we construct against it resulting in a book that c Racine and the Tablecloth This is such a deeply felt story that it’s hard to avoid wondering if the central conflict between Emily an awkward unpopular bookish girl who writes brilliantly and the headmistress of her school who patronizingly distrusts Emily’s narrow focus on writing to the exclusion of traditional feminine virtues is drawn at least in part from Byatt’s own childhood Be that as it may it’s a story about women raging against all the things that trammel them in the tablecloth in particular represents the embroidery that Emily’s aunt who dreamed of traveling and learning took refuge in towards the end of a life that turned out to be entirely devoted to caring for others and included none of what she wanted Racine on the other hand is the teenage Emily’s favorite playwright and “Phedre” represents a similar struggle of passion and desire against limits The ending makes it clear that Byatt does not want you to regard this as a tale from a bygone era describing a problem that no longer exists A rare story in which writing a brilliant essay on a French play is a blow for the rights of womenThe July Ghost Manages to achieve a kind of ghostliness itself by not naming its main characters who are only “the man” and the “the woman” The woman still traumatized by the death of her son some years ago takes the man as a lodger and he starts seeing her son’s ghost The ghost assumes an increasingly large role in their household in a rather inimical way the ending leaves it unclear not only what path the story will take next but also what path it should take The woman is another female character whose family obligations have kept her from achieving her desires even though in this case the obligation is to a dead family memberThe Next Room A vicious jab at people who conceive of the afterlife as a sort of suburban paradise where you will be reunited with your beloved family members Joanna the main character has spent twenty years nursing her mother suppressing her career her tastes and her personality to adjust for her mother’s imperious and abrasive nature Now that her mother is dead she hopes to finally escape from the fetters of her family even at the age of 59 it may still be possible for her to revive her career which is the main thing she cares about Instead she starts hearing her dead parents uarreling as if in the titular location The implication that there is no escape from the family related oppression of women even in the afterlife is fairly grimThe Dried Witch A sudden left turn abandoning modern Britain for a small village in an unnamed and probably imaginary Asian country at an unspecified time that’s probably at least a millennium ago Even grimmer than “The Next Room” it presents a childless and now probably widowed the husband of A Oa the titular witch was taken away to be a soldier years ago and never returned middle aged woman’s decision to become a witch not as an act of rebellion a la “Lolly Willowes” but instead as part of a process by which her village and by extension the larger society rids itself of unnecessary women The whole process has the air of a ritual in which everybody including A Oa is simply playing a part and the outcome A Oa’s death is never in doubt The only part that rings a bit false is the ending