Booker Prize Winners (1990)
The beginning of Possession, and the first
choice, was most unusually for me, the title. I thought of
it in the British Library, watching that great Coleridge
scholar, Kathleen Coburn, circumambulating
the catalogue. I thought: she has given all
her life to his thoughts, and then I thought: she has
mediated his thoughts to me. And then I thought
'Does he possess her, or does she possess him?
There could be a novel called Possession
about the relations between living and dead minds.
-A.S.
Byatt (Choices: On the Writing
of Possession)
A surprise awaits Roland Michell, a postdoctoral research assistant
studying Randolph Henry Ash , as he opens the Victorian poet's personal
copy of Giambattista Vico's Principi di una Scienza Nuova in the
Reading Room of the London Library. The book, apparently untouched
since Ash's death, contains numerous marginalia and personal papers, including
two drafts of letters to an unnamed woman whom the poet met at a breakfast
in the 1850's. Acting on impulse, Roland swipes the letters
and embarks on a quest to determine the identity of the intended recipient
and to explore the ramifications of the correspondence. He determines
that the object of Ash's interest was the fairly minor poetess Christabel
La Motte and, with the help of the beautiful but icy LaMotte scholar Maud
Bailey, reconstructs the relationship between the two--a relationship with
ground shaking import for the understanding of both authors' works.
Meanwhile, several more esteemed and powerful academics get wind of their
search and the quest turns into a race. Along the way Roland and
Maud peel back the further details of an 18th century love affair like
the layers of an onion, and fall in love themselves. Ultimately,
the final revelations about the lives of the poets are unveiled in a drawing
room scene straight out of a British mystery.
Byatt mixes thinly veiled references to historical figures (Ash is Robert
Browning; LaMotte is Christina Rosetti), literary forms (narrative, letters
& poetry), and genres (criticism, thriller, detective story, quest,
etc.) to create an entrancing novel of ideas. Reminiscent of books
like Josephine Tey's Daughter of Time (see Orrin's
review), Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose (whose influence she
acknowledges), and Julian Barnes's Flaubert's Parrot, she shows
that the life of the mind can be thrilling and that a literary mystery
can be just as gripping as a noirish melodrama.
One caution: over the years, I've given this book to half a dozen people
and I don't think a single one of them finished it; I'm certain none of
them much liked it. I think the reason is that you can get bogged
down if you take the Victorian storyline too seriously. It seems
pretty clear that much of the stuff on arcane points of interpretation
and scholarly criticism is meant to be parody, not gospel.
It's also easy to get lost in the poetry and the letters, with all their
imagery and allusions; but keep in mind that they are essentially McGuffins,
meant to advance the plot, not an integral part of it themselves.
Byatt was quite consciously trying to write a novel that would be fun;
it should be read for enjoyment, not for talmudic effect. At any
rate, it's one of my favorite novels, and if you approach it like an arty
version of the Maltese Falcon (see Orrin's
review), you'll love it too.
(Reviewed:22-May-00)
Grade: (A+)
Websites:
Book-related and General Links:
-A.S. Byatt
(author's site)
-Featured
Author: A. S. Byatt (NY Times)
-A.S.
Byatt: An Overview (Victorian Web)
-A.S.
Byatt (Fan Site)
-About
A. S. Byatt
-ESSAY:
Morals and Metaphysics : AS Byatt pays tribute to Penelope Fitzgerald--"one
of the best novelists of my lifetime." Her work combined an English
sensibility with something more metaphysical (A. S. Byatt, Prospect)
-ESSAY: Choices:
On the Writing of Possession (A.S. Byatt)
-ESSAY:
BEST STORY Narrate Or Die: Why Scheherazade keeps on talking.
(A. S. BYATT, NY Times Book Review)
-BOOK
LIST: Other Pasts, Other Places: The author of "Possession" recommends
five unforgettable historical novels. (A.S. BYATT, Salon)
-ESSAY:
Of the Making of Many Lists (A. S. BYATT, NY Times Book Review)
-ESSAY:
THE DEADLY SINS/Envy; The Sin of Families and Nations (A. S. BYATT,
NY Times Book Review)
-ESSAY:
The Back Half - Strange and charmed (A.S. Byatt, New Statesman)
-REVIEW
: of Austerlitz by W. Sebald (AS Byatt, New Statesman)
-REVIEW:
of Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel Garcia Marquez By Love Possessed
(A. S. BYATT, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of LOUIS XIV A Royal Life. By Olivier Bernier (A. S. Byatt, NY Times
Book Review)
-INTERVIEW:
Limestone Seas and Bloody Cobblestones: The author of "Possession"
on the dark side of utopia, the chains of literary feminism and the albatross
of sex (LAURA MILLER, Salon)
-INTERVIEW:
Lit Chat (Salon)
-Page
for A.S. Byatt's Possession
-ESSAY:
'The Stones I shaped endure': Dickinsonian Pastiche in A.S.Byatt's Possession
(Robert Bray, Illinois Wesleyan University)
-ESSAY:
A.S. Byatt's Possession for British and for American Readers (Helge
Nowak (Regensburg)
-ESSAY:
That thinking feeling: Once considered a welterweight whose novels
teemed with complicated ideas and mind-stretching words, AS Byatt has turned
a corner (Marianne Brace, The Observer)
-ESSAY:
Liam Gallagher wants to smash his brother's head in with a guitar
(Dorothy Rowe, The Guardian)
-ESSAY:
Just Like a Woman: Why do we need a women-only prize for fiction? Women
may write differently, says Lesley Chamberlain, but in great writing gender
is transcended and women writers must now insist on its irrelevance (The
Prospect)
-ESSAY:
Anthony Burgess as Fictional Character in Theroux and Byatt (John J.
Stinson)
-ESSAY:
Way Behind Every Great Man . . . (Emily Eakin, NY Times Book Review)
-ESSAY:
Imagining Imaginary Artists (Paul Mattick, NY Times Book Review)
-ESSAY:
Books: What's Best and Where; Year's Worth Of Fiction That Ought To Be
Read (MICHIKO KAKUTANI, NY Times)
-ESSAY:
"The Mermaid" (Peg Aloi)
-DISCUSSION
QUESTIONS: Questions for Discussion on Possession by A. S. Byatt
-REVIEW:
of Possession by A. S. Byatt Unearthing the Secret Lover (JAY PARINI,
NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW:
of Possession (CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT, NY Times)
-REVIEW:
Diane Johnson: The Best of Times, NY Review of Books
Possession
by A.S. Byatt
-REVIEW:
of Possession (BOOKHENGE, Pa2rick Wynne)
-REVIEW:
of Possession ( Audrey M. Clark, Rambles Magazine)
-REVIEW:
of Possession ( Lee Anne Phillips, Women's Books Online: A Cooperative
Book Review Reviews of Women's Books by Women Around the World)
-ARTICLE:
What Possessed A.S. Byatt? (MIRA STOUT, NY Times)
-ARTICLE:
Best Seller Breaks Rule On Crossing The Atlantic (MERVYN ROTHSTEIN,
NY Times)
-ARTICLE:
A.S. Byatt wins the Booker (SUSAN HELLER ANDERSON, NY Times)
-AWARDS:
Booker Prize 1990
-REVIEW:
J.M. Coetzee: En Route to the Catastrophe, NY Review of Books
Babel
Tower by A.S. Byatt
-REVIEW:
Gabriele Annan: Letting Go, NY Review of Books
Elementals: Stories of Fire and
Ice by A.S. Byatt
Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald
-REVIEW
: of On Histories and Stories: selected essays by A S Byatt (Jason
Cowley, New Statesman)
-REVIEW
: of On Histories and Stories: Selected Essays by A S Byatt (Kathryn
Hughes, Booksunlimited uk)
-REVIEW
: of The Biographer's Tale by A. S. Byatt (Daniel Mattingly, Yale Review
of Books)
GENERAL:
-Booker
Prize
-VOICE
OF THE SHUTTLE: ENGLISH LITERATURE MAIN PAGE
-English
Literature on the Web
-ESSAY:
Women missing from BBC artistic works of 20th century (The London Times,
ALAN HAMILTON AND EMMA WILKINS)
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