Imagining Characters: Six Conversations About Women Writers: Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Willa Cather, Iris Murdoch, and Toni Morrison

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'sMansfield Park, Bronte'sVillette, George Elliot'sDaniel Deronda, Willa Cather'sThe Professor's House, Iris Murdoch'sAn Unofficial Rose, and Toni Morrison'sBeloved. The results are nothing less than an education in the ways literature grips its readers and, at times, transforms their lives.Imagining Charactersis indispensable, a work of criticism that returns us to the books it discusses with renewed respect and wonder.