Sugar and Other Stories

Sugar and Other Stories is a short story collection by A.S. Byatt. I like this author and look for her books whenever I'm where books are. She always impresses me, and I'd recommend her.

from the back of the book:

It should come as no surprise that short stories by the author of the magical Possession are populated by erudite paranoiacs, witches, changelings, and the ghost of a dead child. But these otherworldly beings move through landscapes that are as respectable as a London square and as tangible as the well-furnished drawing room of an English country house. A. S. Byatt's short fictions, collected for the first time, explore the fragile ties between generations, the dizzying abyss of loss and the elaborate memories we construct against it, resulting in a book that compels us to inhabit other lives and returns us to our own with new knowledge, compassion, and a sense of wonder.

Racine and the Tablecloth is the first story and begins,

When was it clear that Martha Crichton-Walker was the antagonist? Emily found this word for her much later, when she was a grown woman. How can a child, undersized and fearful, have enough of a self to recognize an antagonist? She might imagine the malice of a cruel stepmother or a jealous sister, but not the clash of principle, the essential denial of an antagonist. She was too young to have thought-out beliefs. It was Miss Crichton-Walker’s task, after all, to form and guide the unformed personality of Emily Bray. Emily Bray’s ideas might have been thought to have been imparted by Martha Crichton-Walker, and this was in part the case, which made the recognition of antagonism peculiarly difficult, certainly for Emily, possibly for both of them.

The first time Emily saw Miss Crichton-Walker in action was the first evening of her time at the school.

Publishers Weekly opens a positive review with this: "In a uniquely expressive and sensuous response to life's enduring ambiguities, Byatt... unfolds the ll stories that make up this collection. The tales are long, for the most part, and intricately constructed..."