{"product_id":"fascination-isbn-9781400078493","title":"Fascination","description":"One of the most beguiling storytellers on either side of the Atlantic delivers a luminous new collection whose 14 stories are a series of variations on the theme of love–and its shady cousin lust. A film director’s journal becomes an unintended chronicle of his deepening and ruinous obsession with a leading lady (“Notebook No. 9”). While flying business class, a well-behaved English architect feels the chill onset of an otherworldly visitation that will shatter his family and career (“A Haunting”). An unhappy young boy, neglected by both his father and adulterous mother, finds an unexpected friend in an elderly painter (“Varengeville”). Wise, unsettling, humane, and endlessly surprising, \u003ci\u003eFascination\u003c\/i\u003e lives up to its title on every page, while confirming William Boyd’s stature as a writer of incandescent talent. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\"A masterwork. . . . [Boyd is] one of the finest authors of our time.\" —\u003ci\u003eForth Worth Star-Telegram\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Brilliant. . . . Burns with the kind of artistry that turns a piece of short fiction into a work of imagination that expands beyond the boundaries of the page. . . [Boyd’s] breadth and depth and control are simply breathtaking.” —\u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Lovely. . . . Elegant. . . . [These stories] deal not simply with art vs. life but with the terrible demands that art makes upon the artist.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"Deeply moving. . . . The insights arrived at in Boyd's stories are experienced rather than merely witnessed. They strike us deep, and they stick.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The stories are perfect…Suffused with an understanding of love, desire, and emotional incompetence.”\u003cbr\u003e–M. John Harrison, the \u003ci\u003eGuardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A virtuoso range of techniques, Boyd shows here just what he is capable of…The resonance and impact of past events on present lives, and a sense of yearning for love or completion, permeate these perfectly formed snapshots of life at its most mystifying.”\u003cbr\u003e–Ross Gilfillan, The \u003ci\u003eDaily Mail\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Boyd’s remarkable, and almost wholly consistent, gift is to convince us of the roundness, the existence of his characters from the very first sentence.”\u003cbr\u003e–Erica Wagner, The \u003ci\u003eTimes\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Short stories by William Boyd are an occasional treat…For those who enjoy what might loosely be called canapé fiction — delicious little morsels that whet the appetite but never sate it — \u003ci\u003eFascination\u003c\/i\u003e is a must-read book.  Every one of the 16 stories has the patina of craftsmanship…The writing transcends cleverness…An impressively sophisticated offering from a writer whose charms never wane.\u003cbr\u003e–David Robson, The \u003ci\u003eSunday Telegraph\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Sly and consistently entertaining…Boyd uses the artistic methods of the cinematographer…but he twists them to his own ends…This collection demonstrates Boyd’s versatility as well as his virtuosity.  He is as much at home writing about nineteenth-century Vienna as he is twentieth century Cape Cod.\u003cbr\u003e–Sebastian Shakespeare, \u003ci\u003eLiterary Review\u003c\/i\u003eWilliam Boyd is the author of eight novels, three collections of short stories, and twelve screenplays that have been filmed. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Whitbread Award for Best First Novel, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e Book Prize for Fiction. He lives in London and southwest France.\u0026lt;\u003cplay\u003e\u0026gt;\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSpringtime in Oxford is vulgar, anyway, but something about this  particular spring in Oxford is having me on. Really, these cherry  trees are absurd. One wonders if just quite so many flowers are  necessary. It is almost as if the cherry trees on the Woodstock Road  are trying to prove something--some sort of floral brag, swanking to  the other, less advanced vegetation. Very Oxford in a way. Could I  work this observation into the novel? \"Only in Oxford do the cherry  trees try too hard.\" Good opening for the Oxford sequence?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u0026lt;\u003crewind\u003e\u0026gt;\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy meeting with my new supervisor was not a success. Dr. Alexander  Cardman. \"Call me Alex,\" he invited almost immediately. He referred  to me as Edward without permission.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"How old are you?\" he asked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Thirty-one. How old are you?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Thirty-three. And you've been writing this thesis for...?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"For, oh, six years. Seven. Seven and a bit. I left Oxford for three  to teach. Then came back.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Teach? Where was that?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Abbey Meade. It's a prep school in Wiltshire.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Ah.\" I could hear the sneer forming in his brain. \"And you came back--\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"To finish my thesis.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I see...\" I was disliking him quite intensely by now. He looked as  if he had gel in his hair. The small, trimmed goatee was rebarbative,  and the faint west country burr in his voice struck me as an  affectation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u0026lt;\u003cplay\u003e\u0026gt;\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSummertown. The Banbury Road. I push through the front gate of \"See  Breezes\" [sic] to meet my new student, Gianluca di  Something-or-other. He is blind, so the language school has told me,  and he needs to be walked to my flat. Not every day, I hope.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA cheery plump woman opens the door and leads me through to a living  room, where Gianluca sits. He is a tall boy--eighteen or nineteen, I  would say--with thick blond hair and a weak-chinned, sad face. His  eyes are open, and as I introduce myself and shake his hand they seem  to stare directly at me, disconcertingly, with only a faint glaucous,  bloodshot hue to them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe walk back to my flat on the Woodstock Road. His right hand rests  gently in the crook of my left elbow, his left carries a briefcase  and a folded white cane. We don't speak, as he had said, in good  English, that he needed to concentrate and count.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe stroll through Summertown's shops and halt the traffic at the  beeping pedestrian crossing. Along Moreton Road to Woodstock Road and  then a hundred yards or so to the house.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Ring this doorbell,\" I say guiding his hand to the gleaming brass  knob, \"and I'll come down to get you.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the hall Gianluca stops and sniffs the air.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"What is this place?\" he says.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A dentist's,\" I say, as breezily as I can muster. \"I live on the top floor.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u0026lt;\u003cpause\u003e\u0026gt;\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFelicia has gone to Malaysia for a week to try to sell Internet  stocks in the Pacific Rim market, or something. Perhaps it's bonds,  or fluctuations in other stock markets, that she's selling; or she  might even be selling other people's hunches about fluctuations in  stock markets in the next decade. I don't even try to understand. She  has given me the key to her house so I can feed her tropical fish  while she's away. When she left at dawn she kissed me good-bye, told  me she loved me, and said, ominously, apropos of nothing, that she  thought I would make a wonderful father. I suppose it's as close as  she'll ever get to issuing an ultimatum.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u0026lt;\u003cplay\u003e\u0026gt;\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"There is,\" I read, \"as every schoolboy knows in this scientific age,  a very close chemical relation between coal and diamonds--\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Please,\" says Gianluca, \"there is a preface by Conrad, no?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Yes.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Could you please begin with that.\" He taps something into his little  portable Braille typewriter, and I go back to the beginning. You  would think that to be paid fifteen pounds an hour to read Joseph  Conrad's Victory to a blind Italian boy is, well, money for old rope,  but I find my heart is curiously heavy with prospective fatigue.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn our first two-hour session we manage five pages. Gianluca listens  with almost painful concentration and asks many, many questions, the  answers to which he doggedly types into his Braille notebook. I walk  him down to the front door, where he unfolds his white cane and sets  off back to \"See Breezes\" with an amazingly unfaltering step. As I  turn back into the hall, Krissi, the actually not unattractive, New  Zealander dental nurse, leans out the door of the surgery and says,  \"Mr. Prentice would like a word at end of business today.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs I plod back upstairs to my little flat beneath the eaves, I think  that \"end of business\" is a classic Prentissian trope and that I must  add it to my collection.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u0026lt;\u003cmemory\u003e\u0026gt;\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI think, perhaps, that I was at my happiest in Nice. Nineteen years  old. At the Centre Universitaire Mediterranean. No family. No  friends. No money. Just freedom. My frowsty room in Madame D'Amico's  apartment. The young whores in the Rue de France. The French girls.  The Tunisian boys. Ulrike and Anneliese. All those years ago. Jesus  Christ.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u0026lt;\u003crewind\u003e\u0026gt;\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDr. \"Alex\" Cardman handed me back my chapter \"Social Consequences of  the 1842 Mines Act in South Yorkshire, 1843-50.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"What do you think?\" I asked. This guy did not frighten me, I had decided.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"There were fifteen errors of transcription in your first quoted  passage,\" he said. \"I didn't read on.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"It's only a draft, for Christ's sake.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Even a second-rate examiner will refer you for that kind of  carelessness,\" he said, reasonably. \"You don't want to get into bad  habits. Bring it back when you've checked everything.\" He smiled.  \"What made you so interested in mid-nineteenth-century mining  legislation? Pretty arcane subject--even for an Oxford doctorate.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIts very arcanity, you fool, I wanted to reply, but instead I chose a  lie, hoping it might cancel the Abbey Meade blunder. \"My father was a  miner,\" I said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Good God, so was mine,\" he said. \"Tin. Cornwall.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Coal. Lanarkshire.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u0026lt;\u003cfast-forward\u003e\u0026gt;\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003einterviewer: You don't seem embittered, even bothered, by the attack  in the Times by Sir Alexander Cardman.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eme: It's a matter of complete indifference. Wasn't it Nabokov who  said the best response to hostile criticism is to yawn and forget? I  yawned. I forgot.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003einterviewer: It seems unduly personal, especially when your book has  been so widely acclaimed--\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eme: I think people on the outside never fully realize the role envy  plays in literary and cultural debate in this country.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u0026lt;\u003cplay\u003e\u0026gt;\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePrentice is wearing his tracksuit and trainers: he likes to go  jogging at the end of a day's dentistry. I offer him a glass of wine,  which he, surprisingly, accepts.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"South African chardonnay,\" I tell him. \"Your neck of the woods.\"  Prentice actually comes from Zimbabwe. He has had his gingery-blond  hair closely cut, I notice, which makes him look burlier, even  fitter, if that were possible. He is always very specific about not  being identified as South African, is Mr. Prentist, the dentist.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I prefer Californian,\" he says.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"What can I do for you, Mr. Prentist?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Prentice.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Sorry.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe smiles, showing his small, immaculate teeth. \"Bad news,\" he says.  \"I have to put the rent up. From next month.\" He mentions a  preposterous figure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"That's a\"--I calculate, trying to keep the rage out of my voice--\"a  one hundred and twenty percent rise.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The going rate for two-bedroom flats on the Woodstock Road, so an  estate agent informs me.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"You cannot call that broom cupboard where I work a second bedroom.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Market forces,\" he says, sipping, then nodding. \"This is actually an  excellent wine.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u0026lt;\u003cfunction\u003e\u0026gt;\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFelicia is unnaturally blond, has a tendency to plumpness, and is  devoted to me. I taught her for a term when she was at Somerville. We  had an affair, for some reason. She went to work for a bank in the  City. She came back to Oxford three years ago. I think, now, that she  came deliberately to seek me out. She makes twenty times more money a  year than I do.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u0026lt;\u003cdisplay\u003e\u0026gt;\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy as yet unfinished novel. Five years in the writing. Which today I  have decided to retitle Morbid Anatomy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u0026lt;\u003cfast-forward\u003e\u0026gt;\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003einterviewer: Why did you resign the Trevelyan Chair of Modern History?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eme: I did not approve of the new syllabus.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003einterviewer: It had nothing to do with internecine strife within the  history faculty, professional jealousies?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eme: As far as I was concerned, it was purely a matter of principle.  It was my duty.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u0026lt;\u003cplay\u003e\u0026gt;\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGianluca looks at me--his sightless eyes are directed at me. I read  on, hastily: \"'Meanwhile Schomberg watched Heyst out of the corner of  his eye'--ah, notice that glorious Conradian cliche--\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Why is Heyst so passive?\" Gianluca asks. \"It's like he's stagnante...\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Same word,\" I say, wondering why, indeed. \"Well, he's a bit of a  drifter, isn't he, Heyst?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGianluca types, I suppose, \"Heyst = drifter\" into his Braille notebook.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Going with the flow,\" I improvise. We have reached page sixty-seven.  I don't think I have ever paid so much attention to a text, and yet I  can remember almost nothing. Each day it's as if I'm starting on page  one again.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u0026lt;\u003crepeat\u003e\u0026gt;\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"He meant to drift altogether and literally, body and soul, like a  detached leaf drifting in the wind currents.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u0026lt;\u003cplay\u003e\u0026gt;\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMrs. Warmleigh has left her Hoover on the stairs. I go to look for  her and ask her to move it, as Gianluca is due.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The blind boy? He's amazing, that one, the way he comes and goes.  Fantastic, it is. Bless him.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI concur, wearily. Mrs. Warmleigh has a warty, smiley face and, oddly  for the cleaning lady in a dentist's, many pronounced gaps in her  famous smile. \"Warmleigh by name, warmly by nature\" she says, at  least two or three times a week.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"You'd look at him,\" she goes on, \"and you could swear he could see. Amazing.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA nasty little sliver of suspicion enters my mind.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u0026lt;\u003crewind\u003e\u0026gt;\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFelicia started talking about children on the day of her  twenty-eighth birthday. We had been \"going out\" for two years by  then. I asked her why she chose to live in Oxford with its tiresome,  lengthy commute to London when, on her salary, she could have lived  in town, conveniently and comfortably. \"I was always happy in  Oxford,\" she said. \"And besides, you're here.\" The logic doesn't hold  up. She came back to Oxford, bought her little house in Osney Meade,  and then we met up again, and, as these things will, resumed our  affair. There is a character in Morbid Anatomy loosely, very loosely,  based on Felicia. I think she dies in a plane crash.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u0026lt;\u003cplay\u003e\u0026gt;\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is vaguely shaming, but I know I have to do it. Gianluca leaves  and thirty seconds later I am out the door, following him. I watch  him for a while and, as he waits at the pedestrian crossing, I use a  gap in the traffic to overtake him. I jog ahead up through the  Summertown shops until I have a hundred-yard start on him, and,  hidden in a doorway, I watch his progress, steady and sure, toward  me. It is true, as Mrs. Warmleigh had observed, without the white  stick there would be nothing in Gianluca's stride or progress to tell  you he was blind. Is it a sad subterfuge, some mental problem? I find  myself wondering--wondering with slowly stirring anger rather than  commiseration, as I'm a significant victim of this subterfuge. Or is  he merely partially sighted and playing it up for more sympathy?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI let him go by. \"Oi, mate.\" I disguise my voice with a bit of Oxford  demotic. \"You drop vis money.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe turns. \"Excuse me?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy empty palm proffers an invisible ten-pound note.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe steps toward me, his eyes moving. \"Some money?\" He digs in his  pocket, producing a wallet. He is blind, all right, blind as a stone,  stone blind, bat blind, and a small pelt of self-loathing covers me  for an instant. \"I dropped money?\" he says, fumbling with his  wallet's zip.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Gianluca?\" a girl's voice calls. We both turn.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Gianluca,\" I say. \"Is everything all right?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Edward,\" he says with relief, \"I thought someone talking to me.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe girl is up to us now, and she takes his arm. She's small, with  wiry brown hair and a mischievous look to her face, half laughing,  half smirking. She wears black and she's smoking.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Is my sister, Claudia,\" Gianluca introduces us. \"This is Edward.  Claudia is coming to stay for a few days. She walk me back home.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI reach out to take her proffered hand, once she transfers her cigarette.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Gianluca has told me everything about you.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Not everything, I hope,\" I say, looking into those thin brown  sightful eyes. And I know.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u0026lt;\u003cpause\u003e\u0026gt;\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt is a kind of watershed, I realize. When you know instantly. And  when the other person knows you know. It is, in its own way, an  infallible sign of adulthood--a threshold crossed. All your imagined,  wistful, striven-for worldliness suddenly coalescing into a simple,  blunt, adult recognition. The last shreds of adolescent insecurity  finally gone. From now on there will never be any doubt or ambiguity.  You can look into a person's eyes, and, wordlessly, the question can  be asked--if you want to ask it--and you will know the answer: yes or  no. End of story.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u0026lt;\u003cfast-forward\u003e\u0026gt;\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003einterviewer: You didn't find that the Nobel\/Booker\/Pulitzer\/Goncourt  inhibited your creativity in any way?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eme: On the contrary. I found it liberating. And the check was very  welcome too. (Laughter.)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u0026lt;\u003crewind\u003e\u0026gt;\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI left Cardman's rooms and wandered out into the quad, holding my  error-strewn chapter rolled up like a baton, like a truncheon, in my  hand. The afternoon sun obliquely struck the venerable buildings,  picking out the detailing of the stonework with admirable clarity.  The razored lawn was immaculate, perfectly striped, unbadged by weed  or daisy, almost indecently, absurdly green. I realized that I hated  old buildings, hated honey-colored crafted stone, hated scholarship,  hated arrogant young dons with their superior ways. So much hate, I  reflected, as I crossed Magdalen Bridge, can't be good for one. The  leaves of my chapter helixed gently down onto the turbid brown waters  of the Cherwell.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u0026lt;\u003cplay\u003e\u0026gt;\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI walk through Felicia's neat, bright house, trying to imagine myself  here. Where would my things go? Where would my desk be? Everything is  neat, neat, neat; everything is tidy and neat. Even the cuddly toys  on her bedcover are neatly arranged in descending order of size.  Predictably, I search her laundry basket for a pair of soiled  knickers to masturbate into but find only tights, cutoff jeans, and a  rugby shirt--and somehow the autoerotic moment is gone. Dutifully, I  feed her dazzling, frondy fish, trying to analyze what I feel for  Felicia, with her decency, her baffling, uncritical devotion, her  compartmentalized mind, at once cutesy and clever, our fundamental  incompatibility...I could just about fit in here, I suppose, but  where would baby go?\u003c\/play\u003e\u003c\/rewind\u003e\u003c\/fast-forward\u003e\u003c\/pause\u003e\u003c\/play\u003e\u003c\/rewind\u003e\u003c\/play\u003e\u003c\/repeat\u003e\u003c\/play\u003e\u003c\/fast-forward\u003e\u003c\/display\u003e\u003c\/function\u003e\u003c\/play\u003e\u003c\/fast-forward\u003e\u003c\/rewind\u003e\u003c\/memory\u003e\u003c\/play\u003e\u003c\/pause\u003e\u003c\/play\u003e\u003c\/rewind\u003e\u003c\/play\u003e","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303581962469,"sku":"NP9781400078493","price":13.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400078493.jpg?v=1767726743","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/fascination-isbn-9781400078493","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}