num_pages: 209
description: 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.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.
language: English
title: Fascination
titlecomplete: Fascination
genres: Fiction, Short Stories
ratings_count: 498
publisher: Hamish Hamilton