Imagining characters
Subtitle: conversations about women writers : Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Willa Cather, Iris Murdoch, and Toni Morrison
By: A.S. Byatt and Ignês Sodré ; edited by Rebecca Swift.
Contributors: Sodré, Ignês.; Swift, Rebecca.
Edition: 1st Vintage Books ed.
Publisher: Vintage Books
Published: 1997
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 268
Subjects: Byatt, A. S. 1936- -- Interviews; Sodré, Ignês -- Interviews; English fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism; American fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism; Psychoanalysis and literature -- Engish-speaking countries; Women and literature -- English-speaking countries; Characters and characteristics in literature
Description: In this innovative and wide-ranging book, Byatt and the psychoanalyst Ignes Sodre bring their different sensibilities to bear on six novels they have read and loved: Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, Charlotte Bronte's Villette, George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, Willa Cather's The Professor's House, Iris Murdoch's An Unofficial Rose, and Toni Morrison's Beloved. The results are nothing less than an education in the ways literature grips its readers and at times, transforms their very lives.

Whether they are examining the bewildering passivity of Jane Austen's heroines, exploring Willa Cather's code of solitude, or reading Toni Morrison's Beloved as a novel about spite, Byatt and Sodre are witty, humane, funny, and profound. For anyone who loves Byatt's novels, for anyone who loves literature, Imagining Characters is indispensable, a work of criticism that returns us to the books it discusses with renewed respect and wonder.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 259-263) and index.
Originally published: London : Chatto abd Windus, 1995.