Cover of Fascination: Stories

Fascination: Stories

In a south-coast town a female bodybuilder wonders whether she should turn professional; in Oxford a young man contemplates a loveless marriage; in nineteenth-century Vienna a prostitute encounters a young composer; in Los Angeles an architect remembers her past in the Weimar Bauhaus; a man meets a woman on a beach and a love affair begins; we track a life through an intricately alphabeticized memoir; Anton Chekhov haunts a short story in 1890s Russia.

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This is William Boyd's third volume of short stories following his acclaimed collections On the Yankee Station(1981) and The Destiny of Nathalie 'X'(1995) and once again these sixteen stories display a variety of settings and characters that is just as mesmerizing and beguiling.

Described as 'the finest storyteller of his generation' and as a writer who 'can establish a character in a single sentence and a situation in a single paragraph', William Boyd demonstrates his mastery of the short-story form in a dazzling array of styles and narrative methods. But Boyd's principal interest resides in his exploration of the human condition and how a life can be dominated by the need for love and by the torments that arise when that love is misplaced or denied. Whether we are in a decrepit country house, a hotel room in Manhattan, a London pub or a Normandy village, these stories investigate and expose with tremendous brio and verve the absurd, poignant and lovelorn lives of the men and women they contain.

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 209 pages

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