This brilliant collection has been called "a masterpiece" by the Sunday Telegraph. Each of the three stories is touched in a different way by the paintings of Henri Matisse. Their subjects' lives unravel from simple beginnings -- a trip to the hair dresser, a cleaning woman's passion for knitting, lunch in a Chinese restaurant but gradually the veneer of ordinariness is peeled back to expose pain, reveal desire, or express the intensity of joy in color and creation.