‘A Stone Woman’ by AS Byatt

I once thought I ought to read some AS Byatt. You know, to improve myself. Shortly after I gave a copy of Possession back to the British Red Cross, defiled now by a series of ever-bigger question marks in the margins, I found The Little Black Book of Stories, and this quietly extraordinary work. It doesn’t seem to know what it is (fable? meditation? yarn?) but will stay with you for years…

First published in The New Yorker, October 13, 2003. Collected in The Little Black Book of Stories, Chatto, 2003