Title: Imagining characters
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.
Subjects: Psychoanalysis and literature, Interviews, History and criticism, Women authors, Women and literature, English fiction, American fiction, Characters and characteristics in literature, English fiction, women authors, American fiction, women authors, American fiction, history and criticism, English fiction, history and criticism, Interviewsbyatt, a. s. (antonia susan) , 1936-, Interviewssodré, ignês, Criticism and interpretationausten, jane , 1775-1817, Criticism and interpretationbrontë, charlotte , 1816-1855, Criticism and interpretationeliot, george , 1819-1880, Criticism and interpretationcather, willa , 1873-1947, Criticism and interpretationmurdoch, iris, Criticism and interpretationmorrison, toni, English fiction--women authors--history and criticism, American fiction--women authors--history and criticism, Women and literature--great britain, Women and literature--united states, Psychoanalysis and literature--english-speaking countries, Women and literature--english-speaking countries, Pr830.w6 b93 1997, 823.009/9287, English Women authors, American Women authors, English literature, American literature
Places: English-speaking countries, Engish-speaking countries
People: A. S. Byatt (1936-), Ignês Sodré