A Whistling Woman

A Whistling Woman is a 2002 novel by British writer A. S. Byatt. The novel was published by Chatto & Windus in 2002 and in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, another division of Penguin.

Tetralogy naming

The novel is the final in a tetralogy, preceded by The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, and Babel Tower. Jonathan Walker, in a paper published by Contemporary Literature, referred to the series of books as the "Frederica quartet". Byatt herself expressed a preference for The Virgin in the Garden quartet when speaking about it and noted her publisher's intention to produce a boxed set, simply titled The Quartet.

Themes

Byatt has said the novel is "about utopianism...and a dangerous sort of mystical romanticism".
A Whistling Woman is half dedicated to Frances Ashcroft.