Rating: 
Summary: Beautifully written, but fairy tales?
Review: Ms. Byatt is an extraordinarily talented writer, and The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye is plenty of proof for any dissenters. Although I have not read Possession (which contains most of the fairy tales collected here), these stories, good as they are, seem like they are part of a missing whole, and seem to yearn for a destination to take the reader to. If the individual plots of each tale were stronger (as fairy tales need a strong plot), I would have been more satisfied with this book. As it is, however, Ms. Byatt shows a wonderful sense of language, which she uses sparingly but with great imagination and tenacity. She reminds me of that other great English novelist, Jane Austen.
Rating:
Summary: very very fun, but most of it is recycled from her novels
Review: So far as I can tell, the Djinn story is the only original thing in this book. The other stories are lifted from her novels in truncated form, kind of pasted in to inflate the size into a book rather than the single story of the title; this is a bit cheap. Nonetheless, the quality of the Djinn story is simply exceptional, a five-star performance that is perceptive, funny, hopeful, and sad. The protagonist is a middle-aged divorcee, whose entire life is displayed in a single magical instant that transforms her - but not her fate. The images are fabulously well drawn, unforgettable really, and will remain engraved in my memory for the rest of my life. Moreover, the subtlety of the encounter with the supernatural is full of delicious ambiguities and a peek into the fantastic that is one of the best I have ever encountered. I loved it, laughed, and felt wonder all at the same moment. So I would warmly recommend this book, so long as the reader knows that the rest of it is somewhat disappointing.
Rating:
Summary: very very fun, but most of it is recycled from her novels
Review: So far as I can tell, the Djinn story is the only original thing in this book. The other stories are lifted from her novels in truncated form, kind of pasted in to inflate the size into a book rather than the single story of the title; this is a bit cheap. Nonetheless, the quality of the Djinn story is simply exceptional, a five-star performance that is perceptive, funny, hopeful, and sad. The protagonist is a middle-aged divorcee, whose entire life is displayed in a single magical instant that transforms her - but not her fate. The images are fabulously well drawn, unforgettable really, and will remain engraved in my memory for the rest of my life. Moreover, the subtlety of the encounter with the supernatural is full of delicious ambiguities and a peek into the fantastic that is one of the best I have ever encountered. I loved it, laughed, and felt wonder all at the same moment. So I would warmly recommend this book, so long as the reader knows that the rest of it is somewhat disappointing.
Rating: 
Summary: a lovely book
Review: These five stories are told with the shimmering grace and ephemeral colors A.S. Byatt readers have come to expect. And as such, these five realistic fairy tales for adults will surely not disappoint. But these tales are, in some way, something more. Written in different times and for different reasons, they nonetheless "hang together" almost as one whole fairy tale about love, dream, story-telling and the many different ways we have of being free. Free to live our own lives, comfortable with themselves, their worlds, and their selves. Free to know we are, indeed, quite special after all.
I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Challenging Ingrained Cultural Knowledge
Review: This collection challenges western ideas of what constitutes a fairy tale by subverting every trope typical to the genre. A.S. Byatt's work, poetic and potent as always, this time succeeds in exploding the genre of the fairy tale by imagining endings, characters, and events which push at the boundaries of western cultural assumptions. These feminist fairy tales both critique, reinvent, and resuscitate stories which have long particpated in maintaining and affirming patriarchal, racist, sexist, and homophobic European/Western ideals. Byatt is a brilliant story teller.
Rating: 
Summary: Confusion, misusage of emotions, already used stories.
Review: When I read this, I was most confused. Some of the stories that she used was also present in 'Possession'. One of them was 'The Glass Coffin', I think that some people will agree with me that this book is obviously just for the sake of publication. It was not the best that I have read by her. The only story that intruigued me was the title of the book, but, certain plots in the story were left hanging and the characters were not as real as the others.
Rating:
Summary: Lush and magical
Review: _The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye_ is a collection of five stories, or more accurately, four stories and a novella, since the title story is actually quite long; it takes up half the book. First we have "The Glass Coffin", which is excerpted from the novel _Possession_. It's a fairly standard princess-rescuing sort of fairy tale, starring a young man who chooses adventure over good sense, and is rewarded for it. Then comes "Gode's Story", also from _Possession_, which is about a man who returns from sea to find his lover deeply changed. It was great within the setting of the novel, and set the mood perfectly when Christabel traveled to Brittany, but standing alone it's a rather depressing story. It works better in context. "The Tale of the Eldest Princess" is simply delightful. The princess goes out on a quest, keenly aware that the eldest child in stories always fails in his or her quest, and usually because of arrogance. This is the story of how the princess consciously tries to make the story go differently this time. In the end she finds something she didn't even know she was looking for. "Dragon's Breath" is a story of bored villagers who gain a new perspective after volcanic creatures destroy most of their town; suddenly they come alive again with tales of tragedy, heroism, and dumb luck. Suddenly they see value in what they have. Seems awfully prophetic, considering this was published three years ago. Finally, we come to the title story, "The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye", which is a lush and romantic tale about a middle-aged professor who goes to a conference in Istanbul, and buys a pretty glass bottle that just happens to contain a djinn. It's a sensual and enchanting tale of a woman learning new things about herself. It is so richly written that Byatt can refer to the remote control as "the black lozenge" without sounding ridiculous. We are immersed in a world of hotels and shops, described so lushly that they feel like scenes from Arabian Nights tales of many years ago, despite their modernity. And while we know, from other tales, what the woman's third wish will be, the ending is written beautifully and doesn't feel cliched. All in all, a wonderful collection of tales.
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