Various Antidotes: Stories

by Joanna Scott

Book Overview

"A greatly gifted and highly original artist...Various Antidotes is purely and simply wonderful."--The New York Times Book Review

The miraculous, transformative stories of Joanna Scott's Various Antidotes range across the world of history and science, alighting on figures both real and imaginary. The stories within are those of obsession and brilliance, of the ultimately human recognition that the world is larger than we believe...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 031242387X
• ISBN13: 9780312423872
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: Picador USA
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Erudition over emotion

This volume of short stories deserves all the praise it has received. The author's stupendous erudition is evident on nearly every page. And yet I will offer a single caveat: despite her undeniable talent as a writer of fiction, Joanna Scott fails to make us care about her characters. There is a frigid, clinical quality to the writing that holds the reader at an emotional distance from the events on the page. And yet the stories themselves are, for the most part, absorbing. There is no disputing that Joanna Scott is a very good writer, but I wish she would give us more of the emotional life of her characters.

Astonishing, brilliant, superlative.

This lady is SMART, in the same league with such novelists as Richard Powers, John Buchan, Francine Prose, and Stephen Dobyns. This collection will make you want to read her other works of fiction. Brimming with insight and beautiful language.

History and Prose Fuse Together Brilliantly

With a keen, almost relentless examination of history and prose, this fusion writing introduces memorable characters, intense settings, and the unerring need to have these stories told. Joanna Scott, one of the great authors in today's literary universe, obsesses over details so far as to allow the reader the luxury of accepting the not so distant past with a profound clarity. This collection of short stories, similiar to the obsession of one of the book's characters, van Leeuwenhoek, must be examined closely, with intelligence and insight, and there lies the real value of Joanna Scott's writing; it requires us to think, and that is medicinal in its own rights