Here are fifteen startling stories that reflect the weird, thrilling realm into which this brilliant English writer's dangerous life and powerful artistic drive propelled her - thirty years of seesawing stability and chaos: constant drug addiction, suicide attempts, productive work in painting and editing, two marriages and a son, long sojourns in mental hospitals, widely admired novels and short stories. Her stories penetrate the black holes of human consciousness and perception, a region of hypnotic games and seductive hallucinations where everything is animate, where the vertiginous panic and tough pride of the outcast merge with a tender, tranquil appeal to what is beautiful and lasting. (From the book jacket,first american edition published in 1975).