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May 01, 2013rab1953 rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
This is a complex book, with many things to comment on. In parts, it is a modern romance about contemporary (post-modern) people who don’t believe in love, but nevertheless grow into a close personal connection, with elements of possession. In others, it is a romantic passion between kindred spirits, drawn together by their feelings but forced apart by social and personal demands of the nineteenth-century middle class. This is particularly interesting when it is expressed in lengthy poems, letters and journals. At another level, it examines different kinds of academic and literary possession, with various researchers and their obsessions for understanding, reputation, completeness and personal satisfaction. And at another level, it’s a literary tour de force, looking at the joys of literature, reading and losing yourself in the creation and re-creation of literature. Byatt manages all of these in a convincing way, combining different forms of writing that give a different perspective on and relationship to each character – some creative, some academic, some poetic, some imaginative. While slow-moving in parts, there’s so much to enjoy, including even comedic and satiric bits, that its 600 pages don’t become tiresome. By the end, when it turns into a melodramatic chase story, it zips along with a what-next spirit and revelations in the salon. A post-modern work about post-modern theorists, it even manages to poke questions at post-modernism when its central figures (they are hardly heroes) fall in love while rejecting the notion of romantic love. I enjoyed this a lot, even though had I read a description of the book I might have thought it would be too literary. So, much respect to Byatt for tackling a forbidding prospect and making it a pleasure.