When a djinn appears in one of A.S. Byatt's fairy tales and grants the fifty-ish academic heroine any wish her heart desires, she asks for her body 'as it was the last time she really liked it'. And lo, she finds herself once more housed in the 'serviceable and agreeable' form she possessed some fifteen years earlier, bearing some marks of experience (an appendix scar), but otherwise compact, neat, strong. She feels wonderful. 'I can go in the streets, she said to herself, and still be recognisably who I am ... only I shall feel better, I shall like myself more.' She proceeds to great adventures of an earthly variety with the djinn himself.

LRB 8 June 1995 | PDF Download