Possession: A Romance

by A. S. Byatt

Hardcover, 1990

Call number

FIC BYA

Collection

Publication

Random House (1990), Edition: 1st American ed, 555 pages

Description

As a pair of young scholars researching the lives of two Victorian poets uncover their letters, journals, & poems, & trace their movements from London to Yorkshire-and from spiritualist seances to the fairy-haunted far west of Brittany-an extraordinary counterpoint of passions & ideas emerges. An exhilarating novel of wit and romance, an intellectual mystery, and a triumphant love story. This tale of a pair of young scholars researching the lives of two Victorian poets became a huge bookseller favorite, and then on to national bestellerdom. Winner of England's Booker Prize, a coast-to-coast bestseller, and the literary sensation of the year, Possession is a novel of wit and romance, at once an intellectual mystery and a triumphant love story. Revolving around a pair of young scholars researching the lives of two Victorian poets, Byatt creates a haunting counterpoint of passion and ideas.… (more)

Media reviews

This is a romance, as the subtitle suggests, but it's a romance of ideas — darkly intricate Victorian ideas and modern academic assembly-line ideas. The Victorian ideas get the better of it.
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Shrewd, even cutting in its satire about how literary values become as obsessive as romantic love, in the end, “Possession” celebrates the variety of ways the books we possess come to possess us as readers.
I won't be so churlish as to give away the end, but a plenitude of surprises awaits the reader of this gorgeously written novel. A. S. Byatt is a writer in mid-career whose time has certainly come, because ''Possession'' is a tour de force that opens every narrative device of English fiction to
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inspection without, for a moment, ceasing to delight.
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User reviews

LibraryThing member camillahoel
A.S. Byatt knows literary studies. Possession is possibly the best description of the best and worst of the discipline that I have ever come across. She accurately captures the thrill of holding in your hands an old edition with a particular history, the uncovering of that piece which not everyone
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has already seen. The whole book is an exploration of that slow uncovering which historical research is all about, the story that changes and shifts as new information is introduced; and the active creation of an interpretation. Together they make up the best of this discipline.

And then there is the scathing parody of both extremes of authorial focus: the biographically oriented, and the sexual/feminist/psychoanalytical, both of which plague the discipline in their attempts to capture and speak for the author.

Strangely, this was never how the book was presented to me whenever people tried to get me to read it. The emphasis was always on the developing relationship between the academics in parallel with that of the authors they study. This to me was a side point. I read the book as more of a love letter to a discipline than as a love story.

But it is both, of course. The story starts with the discovery of a love letter, and continues as two academics search out clues as to the development of it in the various texts produced around the 100 year-old love story. All the while surrounded by helpers and opponents in a configuration that would make Greimas drool.

I was also struck by how fragmented it was. The only other Byatt I have read is The Children's Book, and that felt very organic in how it flowed and moved. Possession is nothing like that. No novel based in an exploration of letters can be, and Byatt seems to have decided to take it to another extreme by including as many forms of writing as possible. I think the only form she skipped was drama.

The book is infamous for the poems. And to a great extent I was annoyed by Byatt's insertion of poetry (although less here than in The Children's Book). I tried to analyse why I feel this way, and I suspect it derives in part from the illusion of personal communication which still adheres to lyric poetry (I noticed, for example, that I had considerably less against the epic style poems, and those that had an ironic voice).

But it is also tied up with Byatt's tendency to set herself up for interpretation. I like interpreting poetry, but I like it less when there are such clear lines laid down for how I should interpret it. Byatt controls the interpretation by hedging narrative around poetry, by surrounding it with scholarly discussion and providing the thoughts and debates of the "authors" in letters. All of which is written by her. It is a tour de force in writing, but it makes the poetry itself lose what usually makes poetry interesting.

That said, I am very aware that my resistance to the poetry is very much a subjective, emotional reaction to something I perceive as tautological. I know the poems are an integral part of this book, and as it progressed I stopped reacting negatively to them. In a book about poets, which celebrates the different styles of writing to such an extent, it would have been wrong to omit them.

Of other forms, I counted the short story, the personal letter (of course), the less personal letter, diaries, biographical studies of an author, psychoanalytical feminist studies of texts, and of course the controlling and analysing narrator which I have now come to expect from Byatt. The more I read, the more I appreciated the variety in writing styles and how they forced me to all the while see the narrative from a different perspective (as change of style inevitably involved the introduction of new information as well).

I was also fascinated by the continual references to spiritualism. It ties in with the problem of trying to access the author, which I see as the central problem of the book: when the author is dead (figuratively and actually), the motif of spiritualism becomes a very telling one. It makes Cropper and Leonora Stern (both, but him especially) analogous to the table-rappers, ties them to the presumption of speaking on behalf of someone absent.

There is more to say on this, but I don't want to spoil the book for anyone. The development of the narrative(s) is a central part of the experience. I will say that Byatt has now gained my confidence. This means I will probably look up more books by her, hoping that I have not already read her two best ones.
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LibraryThing member StoutHearted
When I first read this book, I couldn't believe that the snippets of writing supposed to be by Ash and LaMotte were Byatt's own creation. Though Byatt's writing does have a classic quality, the narration effortlessly drops into the voices of the two long-gone (fictional) writers as if they were
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real authors studies in a literature course. The result is an unfolding mystery that seems prime for both romantics and English majors.

The novel unfolds the budding romance of two couples: Historians Maud and Roland team together to uncover the never-before discovered liaison between their two favorite authors: LaMotte and Ash, respectively. The narration takes frequent flashbacks through the letters and diaries of the Victorian characters. The discovered affair is a blockbuster, and the historians must do all they can to solicit information without giving away their knowledge to rivals. Ash, a celebrated writer, was known as a devoted husband, while LaMotte, who was lesser-known, was the darling of students of lesbian writing due to her live-in relationship with Blanche, a struggling painter. The novel goes through themes of passion, and the consequences of acting upon those feelings.

An interesting part of the novel deals with modern Feminism. Maud laments that to be taken seriously as a feminist, she must downplay her looks. She notes that it angers her colleagues when her long blond hair is worn down. Thus, she affects a cold persona that is her trademark. Her relationship with Roland eventually draws her out of her hard shell and gives her confidence that her own intelligence makes her a valid historian, as well as a feminist. Another feminist issue is the troubled Christabel LaMotte/Blanche Glover relationship. The two, or at least Blanche, sought the relationship as a haven away from the world of men, to prove that women could be independent. Being the Victorian Age, lesbianism was not something to be spoken of publicly, so students of LaMotte gathered the nature of the relationship through inferred clues in the women's domestic habits and Blanche's diary. Yet, it appears that Christabel had a love affair with a man, a fellow writer who she found a kindred spirit with, much to the devastation of Blanche. Blanche's actions as a spurned lover may open the novel to criticism, but each character's actions must stand on their own, and not be judged upon stereotypes. She is a tragic character, a product of the Victorian barriers on poor, rejected women determined to retain their dignity. Love, in this novel, seems to be a driving force that cannot be stopped even when the characters know it's wrong. Ash loved his wife, yet he allowed himself to love another woman. Christabel deceived Blanche about her relationship with Ash. Yet, it does seem like lesbians get a bad rap in the novel. Besides Blanche's failed "experiment," as she called it in her diary, one of Maud's colleagues, a bisexual, makes almost grotesque overtures to seduce her. Yet we can't say that Christabel and Ash's relationship was superior to that of Christabel and Blanche. Christabel's heterosexual relationship does not end happily, either. We are not privy to Christabel's private feelings during happier times with Blanche, though that might have been provided if the novel was about them. Ultimately, the novel is about the dangerous nature of love, how it comes by surprise and takes possession of of your heart, and drives you into action when, until before, you thought you were asleep. It's this powerful brand of love that transcends sexuality and morality that can lead one into euphoria and devastate.

This novel is not for light reading -- the Victorian excerpts can run tedious at times, especially for those who fell asleep in English class. While the main characters are well-rounded, the side characters are a bit farcical at times, perhaps a little jibe at the rabidness of academia. The tragedy of Blanche may cause bad feelings for some readers, but Ellen Ash, the devoted wife, is also tragic in her stoic determination to remain blind and untouched. Ultimately, the reader must resolve the heated passion between the writers, and the sadness of their significant others. It is not to be treated like a "bodice ripper," but a serious discussion on the nature of love.
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LibraryThing member Widsith
OK I have to say something. People keep writing reviews of this book and talking about how it was great except for all the boring poems which they skipped through.

READ THE POETRY, PEOPLE! What's the matter with everyone?? They're actually rather good, they are full of plot clues, and, duh, they're
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a key part of the novel you're reading. I mean what is going on here? Do people really hate poetry so much that they're skipping a few pages of it in the middle of a story? If you try that shit with Hamlet you're going to miss half the play. Or is this part of some weird trend? Perhaps you hold your hands over your ears when the Rolling Stones switch to 12/8 time, or fast-forward through all the Frank Sivero scenes in Goodfellas? Or is it literally just verse? I mean, you know there are books out there which are all poetry, right? What's the matter, do you have a rhyme allergy? Too much alliteration brings on your irritable bowel syndrome? What's going on??

Oh, I give up.

PS the actual book is excellent.
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LibraryThing member Lexicographer
Slowly, slowly I made my way into "Possession." I wasn't sure if I would make it through the book, when I started. All those poems. The dry world of academe. *British* academia, no less.

Then, about a third of the way into the book, I realized I didn't want to put it down. I was completely
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possessed myself, with the need to get to the end of the story. Of Ash and LaMotte's story, of Roland and Maud's story. In this way, I became a part of the story, no different from the characters in the urge to follow the narrative, to find meaning.

Byatt has written a book about books, and a book about readers, and a book about obsession. In doing this, she has written a book that seems to me, as a reader, to really be about what it is to be human.
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LibraryThing member lauralkeet
Possession is a rich, layered novel featuring both a romance between two Victorian-era poets, and present-day relationships between academics who have made their careers as experts on the poets' lives. Roland Michell is a kind of perpetual student, researching the life of Randolph Henry Ash. Maud
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Bailey is established in her career with a university's women's studies center; her specialty is the poet Christabel LaMotte. When the book opens, Roland has made an interesting discovery indicating Ash may have had a relationship with a woman other than his wife. His inquiry leads him to Maud. Together they assemble a picture of a romance between Ash and LaMotte, which turns prevailng academic opinion upside-down. Others begin to pursue the prize and the associated professional glory.

Byatt employs several creative devices to develop the characters and tell the story. Ash and LaMotte's relationship is reconstructed primarily through artifacts (letters, journals) obtained by Roland and Maud. Byatt "reproduces" them in their entirety so the reader feels like part of the research team. The romantic storyline also unfolds from several points of view, with each person having only a partial picture. The reader can see it all. And as the Victorian mystery is solved, the lives of present-day characters become increasingly interconnected. Byatt concludes the novel by tying up several threads and adding a quite satisfying postscript.
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LibraryThing member MyopicBookworm
It is not hard to see why this book was considered one of the best novels of its time. It is densely complex, yet without being inaccessible, and I enjoyed it very much.

Possession is subtitled "A Romance", but actually it is two romances, as well as a mystery and (in a quiet, academic sort of a
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way) an adventure story. For the first part of the book, the 19th-century romance is told indirectly through letters and diaries, forming a kind of epistolary novel-within-a-novel which is gradually discovered by the 20th-century characters, as they also gradually discover the nature of their own relationships. The effectiveness of this indirectness is such that, when the narrative viewpoint shifted at the beginning of chapter 15, I was initially disappointed. However, the author's narrative led me on, and persuaded me that there is a benefit to the reader in knowing the tale as the later characters cannot know it. By the time I was about 60 pages from the end, I was tempted to abandon my measured reading in short instalments and simply gallop to the end. The final climax is quite exciting, and the resolution satisfying.

This is a book that will undoubtedly need reading again and again. Not least among the reasons for this is the need to assimilate the embedded poetry (which, probably like most readers on a first reading, I rather skimmed over). It is an extraordinary feat of almost Tolkienian magnitude to feign the work of not one but two fictional Victorian poets (one almost Tennysonian in grandeur, the other bringing echoes of Emily Dickinson), and to do so at considerable length, with verse which makes symbolic and thematic allusion to the novel's plot as well as to relevant strands of 19th-century philosophy and mythography. (Incidentally, Byatt has made me want to investigate the writings of Vico.) This exploration of the 19th-century mind is is accompanied by (partly but not wholly) satirical references to the similar obsessions of the 20th-century intellectual world, especially feminist thought and its attempts to grapple with the assumptions and prejudices of 19th-century literature. As I write, it also occurs to me that a reading of the letters of Abelard and Heloise might usefully inform a re-reading of the novel. I look forward to revisiting this book.

MB 27-ii-2009
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LibraryThing member Meredy
One-paragraph synopses of this work not only fail to do it justice but are incapable of encapsulating what it's really about. I avoided this book for a couple of years because I was expecting some sort of soppy romance, two researchers sighing over the passions of their respective biographical
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subjects when suddenly their eyes meet...a sort of literary Paolo and Francesca, acting out the imagined scenes of their counterparts of a century previous.

Not so. It is a romance, yes, in several senses, but also a solid mystery, a suspense-filled quest, a vivid tale of memorable characters and deep secrets, and a thoroughly satisfying intellectual adventure.

Among the entangled and entangling threads of this masterwork are such transcendent themes as loss and betrayal, guilt and redemption, passion and its aftermath, art in life and life in art, the universality and truth of myth, and, perhaps above all, the meaning of possession in all its many senses.

It is also about literary scholarship, the drama and peril of life in academe, the biographer's art, identity, the fusing of researcher with his or her subject matter, and, most especially, voice. One of the principal characters is known as the Great Ventriloquist for his ability to assume the personas of his chosen subjects and speak in their voices through his poetry. Byatt herself performs this feat with stunning adeptness as she fabricates literary works, correspondence, journals, and point-of-view scenes in distinctly different character voices, styles, and degrees of intimacy. The awareness of audience as an informing presence is everywhere, sometimes explicitly, and pointedly reveals how the envisioned reader participates in the author's act of creation.

The compositions of the nineteenth-century characters are not merely showcases of Byatt's command of language, genre, character, and voice. The poetry is an intrinsic part of the novel (unlike Tolkien's exhausting verses, which can all be skipped) and is a remarkable feat in itself. Byatt's masterly revelation of her long-dead characters' personal histories, piece by piece, allows the reader to experience in the poems something of the same flashes of comprehension and sense of discovery as do the scholarly twentieth-century characters themselves while unraveling the mysteries of their subjects.

This novel more than rewards the investment of reading it. It demands much of the reader and gives back still more. I can only marvel at the mind that created it. I have to give this one five stars; nothing less would do for this monumental work.
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LibraryThing member Cynara
Two of my reading friends had independently suggested that I must read this book, and a relation pressed it into my hands during a November visit. Sometimes these things are meant to be!

My feelings about this book fluctuated as I read it.

First, it is subtitled "A Romance" in a knowing literary way
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- it has quests and damsels and knights, of a sort. Certainly the tension of the story lies in the relationship between two pairs of people. It has a really good first chapter which involves you in the world, making it seem appealing and compelling, and it also appealed to my love of poetry and the Life of Letters. However, the prevailing mood, particularly of the modern framing story, is not necessarily what I would call romantic.

In fact, I was sometimes troubled by the story of the modern scholars, the ones who uncover a previously unknown set of letters between two Victorian poets. Particularly at the beginning of the book there was a feeling of having missed the great years of arts and sciences, of love, of life. The first third of the book could have been titled Why One Should Never Enter English Academia; the stench of constriction, poverty, boredom, and cat pee was dispiriting. The 19th century poets are much more alive than either of our modern protagonists - a problem not entirely rectified by the end of the book.

On the other hand, the second half of the book turns it around fairly well. Byatt shakes up her cast of characters and recombines them in interesting ways. The last chapters have a refreshing feeling of renewal and new beginnings.

Byatt writes feelingly and well (and maybe a little too much) about the absurdities of literary criticism. Some parts of the book do feel a little calculated or dated, e.g. the supremacy of gender theory and women's studies.

On the other hand, her 19th century letters and poems are very 'period', she develops the writers' two distinct voices with precision, and some of their poems aren't bad, either. On the other hand, do you really feel like reading three hundred lines of pastiche Victorian poetry before you're allowed to read the next chapter? You'd be surprised.

Most of all, the plot is compelling. It's a literary mystery, and if it's awfully convenient that new journals and letters with pieces of the puzzle keep being discovered, well so be it. As a whole it led me on to the last page in fascination and enjoyment.

I love the cover. Rossetti's "Beguiling of Merlin" is perfect, visually and thematically. Also, I imagine I'm alone in this, but I found something powerfully familiar about Merlin's features; I eventually realised that one of the Dragonlance series' cover artists had used them as a basis for Raistlin's. Ha!
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LibraryThing member Niecierpek
It’s a superb book. There are so many layers to it that it would be impossible to deal with all of them in a short review. At the plot level, it is a story of two contemporary literary scholars who discover a secret love correspondence between two Victorian poets and pursue it in a covert quest.
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At the literary level, it is a great mixture of narrative, literary criticism and different writing forms including letters, stories, and poems all packed into a detective story convention. Words have multiple meanings, there are myths interwoven into the plot, symbols and comments on reading and writing. All this is wrapped in beautiful writing. A real delight to read.
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LibraryThing member mrstreme
Possession by A.S. Byatt was a literary detective story that is loved by many readers. Winner of the Man Booker Prize, the story of Roland Mitchell and Maud Bailey’s search of a possible love affair between two Victorian poets has delighted readers all around the world.

For me, I enjoyed the
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“detective side” of Possession. I was on the edge of my seat when Roland and Maud combined forces to determine if fictional poets, Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte, were in love with each other. Roland first discovered drafts of letters in Ash’s archives, which led him to Maud, an expert in LaMotte’s poetry. They continued to search through letters, replicate Ash’s holidays and comb through archives to find the connection between these contemporary poets – all while trying to hide their possible discovery from more well-known and wealthier scholars.

I respected Byatt’s ability to replicate Victorian prose. We learned about Ash and LaMotte only through their poetry and letters. She had to create all of this – and it was a lot – which I thought was a remarkable task.

My main complaint about Possession,though, is the overabundance (in my opinion) of Victorian prose that you have to sift through. I am not a fan of Victorian prose, so this is a personal bias. I handled the letters, but when it came to pages of poetry, I found myself skipping ahead.

This book has piqued my interest in the movie, but other than that, it’s a book that I can now check off my list. I don’t regret reading Possession, but I am glad to move on to books that better suit my reading tastes.
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LibraryThing member iwriteinbooks
Feeling washed up and worn out, Randolph Henry Ash scholar, Roland, is about to throw in the towel. His girlfriend, Val (a former scholar, herself), has found a “sensible” job and wishes Roland would just do the same.

Things change, one afternoon, when lo and behold, Roland stumbles across a
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piece of Ash’s past that will send his colleagues and competitors into a whirlwind chase for the glory of bragging rights and the hope of historically charged romance.

Though the book is well written and incredibly layered, there was depth lacking, for me at least. Despite weighing in at over 550 pages, it seemed a little bit rushed. It might have been better served to have been played out in a series or, at least, two books.

That said, I obviously would have read more of it, had there been more to read.

I enjoyed the characters a great deal and was not bothered by the three-dimensional, noir-like villains (they actualy made me smile, a lot). The true beauty was not in present day (well, 1990′s present day) character development but in the evolution of the characters not shown: Ash and his literary correspondent as the subjects of the academic artifacts.

Of course, as any fine writer accomplishes, Byatt succeeds in at least some transfer of life altering change from the subject of study to those doing the study. The book watches those wandering in the badlands of rejected academia come around to the spark they once had. It also sees several lives, formerly entrenched in walled confinements of emotionally devoid solitude open up to receive love through unexpected paths.

Over all, I think it was a fine read if not as fleshed out as it could have been and has encouraged me to read a little bit more of Byatt’s work, down the road. It has also given me a bit of a different view regarding the wide variety picked for Booker winners, each year as Finkler and The Sea differ greatly from Possession.
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LibraryThing member MaureenCean
I'll be honest - I skipped what many would consider to be important portions of this novel, namely the poetry and the love letters. Bottom line, I can't follow Victorian romance poetry, and the letters weren't far removed. As historical fiction though, this was a really good story, and the number
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of books I favor with a current and past activity going on at once continues to grow. It made for interesting discussion at our book club, but I should note that everyone had a hard time with it and the number of readers that could finish in a month was low (as in one)....FYI! I do respect the author's work overall in all she accomplished, even though I could not fully appreciate it.
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LibraryThing member jwhenderson
Possession: A Romance is a 1990 bestselling novel by British writer A. S. Byatt that also won the 1990 Booker Prize. The novel explores the postmodern concerns of similar novels, which are often categorized as historiographic meta fiction, a genre that blends approaches from both historical fiction
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and meta fiction. In this specific case one of the main themes, struck in the epigraph from Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables, is that this novel is a romance in its attempt to "connect a bygone time with the very present that is flitting away from us".

The romance follows two modern-day academics as they research the paper trail around the previously unknown love life between famous fictional poets, Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte. Possession is set both in the present day and the Victorian era, pointing out the differences between the two time periods, and satirizing such things as modern academia and mating rituals. The structure of the novel incorporates many different styles, including fictional diary entries, letters and poetry, and uses these styles and other devices to explore the postmodern concerns of the authority of textual narratives. The title Possession highlights many of the major themes in the novel: questions of ownership and independence between lovers; the practice of collecting historically significant cultural artifacts; and the possession that biographers feel toward their subjects.

The romance concerns the relationship between two fictional Victorian poets, Randolph Henry Ash (whose life and work are loosely based on those of the English poet Robert Browning, or Alfred, Lord Tennyson, whose work is more consonant with the themes expressed by Ash, as well as Tennyson's having been poet-laureate to Queen Victoria) and Christabel LaMotte (based on Christina Rossetti (although LaMotte is presented as much less well-known poet than was Rosetti) as learned by present-day academics Roland Mitchell and Maud Bailey. Following a trail of clues from various letters and journals, they work to uncover the truth about Ash and LaMotte's history before it is discovered by rival colleagues. Byatt provides extensive letters, poetry and diaries by major characters in addition to the narrative, illuminating the work with poetry attributed to the fictional Ash and LaMotte. I enjoyed the many references to literary and philosophical sources and themes that the author interpolates within the narrative. One favorite theme of mine is reading which is explored near the end of the novel:

"It is possible for a writer to make, or remake at least, for a reader, the primary pleasures of eating, or drinking, or looking on, or sex. Novels . . . do not habitually elaborate on the equally intense pleasure of reading. There are obvious reasons for this, the most obvious being the regressive nature of the pleasure, a mise-en-abime even, where words draw attention to power and delight of words, and so ad infinitum, thus making the imaginative experience something papery and dry, narcissistic and yet disagreeably distanced, without the immediacy of sexual moisture or the scented garnet glow of good burgundy. And yet, natures such as Roland's are at their most alert and heady when reading is violently yet steadily alive." (pp 510-11)

Written in response to John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman the novel explores the postmodern concerns of that and other similar novels, which are often categorized as historiographic meta fiction, a genre that blends approaches from both historical fiction and meta fiction. Byatt wrote elsewhere that "Fowles has said that the nineteenth–century narrator was assuming the omniscience of a god. I think rather the opposite is the case—this kind of fictive narrator can creep closer to the feelings and inner life of characters—as well as providing a Greek chorus—than any first–person mimicry. In 'Possession' I used this kind of narrator deliberately three times in the historical narrative—always to tell what the historians and biographers of my fiction never discovered, always to heighten the reader’s imaginative entry into the world of the text."
This is only one of the many ways that Byatt keeps the novel (romance) interesting for the reader. The combination of mystery, romance, and literary references made this an engaging and delightful book that become progressively more interesting as I read toward its unexpectedly exciting denouement.
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LibraryThing member shelterdowns
A crime of passion, you might call it, when Roland Michell, a scholar of the great nineteenth century poet Randolph Henry Ash, steals two pages in the poet’s writing, the draft of a letter he discovers in a long-neglected book. The letter leads him to a possible intended recipient, the lesser
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known poet Christabel LaMotte, and that poet’s devoted scholar, Maud Bailey. Their present hums with academic espionage and whimpering, frustrated careers, the past is alive with journals, essays, and poetry, such poetry that the reader can’t help but dig in right along with the main characters, appreciating every sacrifice they make along the way.

We meet the poets of the past, and snatch their precious secrets from hidey-holes and graves. Despite our distance from them, Ash and LaMotte are so very real, so fragile and so great, the essence, masculine and feminine, of the nineteenth century. And here is Byatt’s feat. She wrote every stitch of their work herself. Though very much their own persons, these two are meant to be the embodiment of their age, and have as much to say about our idealization of the past figures that we build our knowledge upon as about themselves.

More than a romance, although it can certainly be enjoyed that way, the key to the book’s layered meanings is its title. In Byatt’s new introduction, she explains that the idea of the novel came to her while she was contemplating a literary scholar, wondering if the scholar’s subject possessed the scholar, or the reverse. Of course, both are true, as is every extrapolation thereof we can become dizzy contemplating.

Possession has the dearth and architecture of a 19th century novel. Byatt has a gift for character voice, each point of view unmistakable, every world within world breathing history and charm. Wise, kind, and full of a kind of intimate detail any scholar or bibliophile would appreciate, this is a sensory treasure.
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LibraryThing member Arctic-Stranger
What happens when two English majors fall in love? They discover a hidden relationship between the subjects of their research. Well actually they are Drs of English Lit, and their historical romp at times mirrors, and then almost mocks their own relationship.

Byatt is a master of the language and
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plot. This is a dense work in every good sense of that word. It is not necessarily a hard read, but it is demanding, and rewards the effort.
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LibraryThing member LisaMaria_C
I did ultimately love this book, but it took me over half its length to warm up to it. I enjoy literate love stories, the mixing of genres, literary allusions and pastiches, and this book provides all of the above. This is a literary mystery as well as a contemporary and a historical romance: two
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contemporary literary scholars, Roland Michell and Maud Baily, fall for each other as they uncover the romance between the two Victorian poets they study, Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte.

I think part of my problem was that Byatt did too well capturing the era's style in her creations of letters and poems by her fictional poets, and I'm no fan of Victorian literature. Much of the poetry, some lengthy, bored me, then I hit a wall about a third of the way through when I reached the chapter of about fifty pages of their correspondence in the style of the era. It was just too tedious reading these characters going into raptures over each other's poetry, and after reading a few letters, I skipped the rest of that chapter, and then started skipping the poems that began the chapters. The book is also studded with diary entires, portions of Mortimer Cropper's biography of Ash, and articles of literary criticism. It's all technically impressive, but for me the poems and letters dragged down the narrative. And Byatt can count one misfire in her otherwise laudatory ability at capturing voices--Cropper is not a convincing American. (Among other things, his writings include words like "whilst" and "candy floss" an American wouldn't use, and though I could suppose Byatt meant it as an affectation of his, her irritating insistence on describing him in terms of American stereotypes--gunslinger more than once--tends to belie that. Her other American character, Leonora Stern, was more successful.)

Much of the first 300 pages of the book were a grind, but then after that it became for me more and more of a page-turner, and I stayed up all night to read those last hundred pages. I liked how the tales of past and present intertwined, and I grew to love the characters, the way the many meanings of possession figure in the plot in thought-provoking ways, the lovely prose, and ultimately I got caught up in the interplay of ideas and how they fit into the romances. So if you find yourself wanting to give up (and it crossed my mind at one point), all I can say is I think the book's difficulties are worth pushing through, and if you need to skip that epistolary section or the poems to keep going, I don't think it hurts the narrative to do so--and eventually you may want to go back to those parts. I found the concluding pages moving and the post-script was a lovely grace note. I could see coming back to this book for rereads someday and finding more each time.

Despite finding aspects and parts of this novel amazing, I can't see giving a full five stars to a book where I slogged through or skipped so much--but what I loved here, I loved. So four it is.
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LibraryThing member emily_morine
A.S. Byatt's Possession was my last attempt to rouse myself out of my current fiction funk with ever-more-appealing....well, fiction. Based on the glowing reviews and candy-like (for me) subject matter, I knew that if any novel could rouse me from my late-summer malaise, it would be this one: a
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literary mystery centering around two modern scholars of Victorian literature researching a newly-unearthed connection between the two poets in whose work they respectively specialize. Appealingly larded with real-world literary references and metafictional artifacts-within-stories-within-novels, Possession is the kind of novel that inspires me to put everything on hold in order to devour great chunks of it while sipping tea under a blanket. Sadly for me, in this particular instance what I really needed was a good dose of nonfiction, and it turns out that not even metafictional Victoriana was an acceptable substitute. The first 350 pages of Possession were therefore a bit of a slog for me, even as I could tell I would normally be falling head-over-heels for everything Byatt was up to. When I returned to polish off the final 150 pages (after an investigative book-length essay and half a memoir) I fell fully in love with Byatt's tome at last, laughing, crying, underlining and generally carrying on. I come away from this first foray convinced that I must re-read Possession, not only in order to extend my newfound love to the entire volume, but because this is the kind of novel that begs to be re-read, to appreciate all the carefully-plotted details and previously-unknown implications right from the beginning.

Because if there's one thing to appreciate in Possession, it's what a dazzling architecture of plot and meta-artifacts Byatt has constructed here. The base of the novel is a close third-person narration that gives us the viewpoints of 1980s scholars Roland Michell and Maud Bailey, as well as glimpses of their colleagues and academic rivals. There are also similar, less frequent chapters narrating the experiences of these scholars' Victorian subjects: Randolph Henry Ash (whose psychological, character-driven blank verse and ardent love-letter-writing abilities recall Robert Browning) and Christabel LaMotte (a bisexual mystic with Elizabeth Barrett's reclusiveness and Emily Dickinson's fondness for em-dashes). Layered on top of this, we have conversations with and about other Ash and LaMotte scholars; letters between Ash and LaMotte, among others; drafts of yet more letters that were never sent; several journal fragments, one of them quite long; written first-hand accounts by third parties of incidents involving one or both of the poets; excerpts from a fictional and self-important Ash biography (complete with quoted material from real-life Victorians); a long passage from an equally self-important piece of feminist criticism on LaMotte; contemporary newspaper cuttings relevant to the poets' lives; and, of course, a generous helping of both poets' actual work, both prose and verse.

All of which is crafted by Byatt with a pitch-perfect ear for a wide variety of both Victorian and late-twentieth-century styles of expression. Neither period is monolithic for Byatt; her American feminist critics write differently than her good-old-boy British critics, and her Victorian characters are writing in different modes from one another, and in different modes from their younger selves as they age. I particularly like how carefully Byatt develops Ash's and LaMotte's different poetic styles, and the way, as the secrets of their lives are revealed, she allows the reader to see how those two styles influenced one another. From the Browning-like Ash (although this passage is more Miltonic, but it's one of my favorites):


Then Ask stepped forward on the printless shore;

And touched the woman's hand, who clasped fast his.

Speechless they walked away along the line

Of the sea's roaring, in their listening ears.

Behind them, first upon the level sand

A line of darkening prints, filling with salt,

First traces in the world, of life and time

And love, and mortal hope, and vanishing.

And from the Dickensian LaMotte:


All day snow fell

Snow fell all night

My silent lintel

Silted white

Inside a Creature—

Feathered—Bright—

With snowy Feature

Eyes of Light

Propounds—Delight.

What's even more to Byatt's credit is that she is able to use these imitative powers to evoke so many different effects: sometimes she elicits snickers and guffaws with her spot-on parody of academic puffery, and other times her characters' distinct voices evoke pathos, respect, or anger on the part of the reader. Possession is far from a heartless book, as some metafiction can be—if its cleverness is always present, it adds in a satisfying amount of emotional insight and compassion. I ended up caring about all four protagonists very much, and even feeling a sense of amused attachment to the bevy of more ridiculous academics surrounding Maud and Roland. Ash's wife Ellen, late in the novel, became one of the most affecting characters, and someone with a surprising amount of depth.

So too, Byatt's intellectualism isn't just a clever display: she has important things to say about personal and social influence, and the way societies affect individuals. I thought the dynamics of oppression were particularly interesting in Possession: we so often think of Victorians, particularly Victorian women, as living in a sexually repressive atmosphere, and Byatt's novel certainly doesn't deny this. For one character in particular, the lack of what we now call "sex education" has tragic results, and another must choose between artistic autonomy and sexual fulfillment. But Byatt spends perhaps more time examining the ways in which late-twentieth-century Brits are also sexually oppressed—not by the Victorian injunction never to talk about sex, but by the modern, Freudian idea that we should ALWAYS be talking about it, that nothing else so merits our attention.


Roland laid aside Leonora Stern['s book on LaMotte] with a small sigh. He had a vision of the land they were to explore, covered with sucking human orifices and knotted human body-hair. He did not like this vision, and yet, a child of his time, found it compelling, somehow guaranteed to be significant, as a geological survey of the oolite would not be. Sexuality was like thick smoked glass; everything took on the same blurred tint through it. He could not imagine a pool with stones and water.

And Maud, a few pages earlier:


"I agree, Dr. Nest. In fact I do agree. The whole of our scholarship—the whole of our thought—we question everything except the centrality of sexuality—Unfortunately feminism can hardly avoid privileging such matters. I sometimes wish I had embarked on geology myself."

It's Roland's and Maud's inescapable self-consciousness, with regard to sexuality and also with regard to narrative tropes, that oppresses them. In one passage, they marvel together at their subjects' ability to take themselves seriously—the educated postmodernist has been trained to such a suspicion of ideas like "romantic love" and "the autonomous self" that the result is sometimes a kind of paralysis, an inability to feel or express anything sincere or admit that anything is meaningful. In another passage, toward the end of the book, Roland speculates that the narrative encapsulating him is changing from a "quest"/"romance" to a "chase," which are all equally valid traditions and all of which he remains unable to take quite seriously. What's needed, Byatt seems to argue, is some middle ground between the earnest double-standard of Victorianism and Romanticism, and the facetious over-analysis of Postmodernism. Given that Roland's and Maud's very NAMES recall Shakespeare/Browning and Tennyson, the reader will perhaps realize this before they do. Nevertheless, their journey is satisfying both on a superficial, "find out what happens in the mystery" level, and on a more lasting, thought-provoking plane. I look forward to revisiting it in the future, when I'm in a truly novelistic mood.
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LibraryThing member tjsjohanna
This is strenuous reading. For people who love words and poetry and the modern literary world this book is a treasure. Ms Byatt does a great job of creating a plot line that compels the reader to want to know "what happened". In addition, the character development of the main modern characters is
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satisfying. There is a wealth of detail and allusion and suggestion. The more carefully this book is read, the more revealed.
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LibraryThing member runaway84
Now and then there are readings that make the hairs on our neck, the non-existent pelt, stand on end and tremble, when every word burns and shines hard and clear and infinite and exact, like stones of fire, like points of stars in the dark... -Possession, Pg. 512

How do I write a review worthy of
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such a breathtaking book? How do I write a review explaining the beauty of this book without giving anything away?

I will try.

For NaNoWriMo last November, I wrote a story about a man who moves into an old house. While renovating, he discovers old letters and journals from a time long ago. These documents provided leads into old, mysterious deaths and a disappearance of a family.

My point: I love stories like these. Huge secrets that leave small clues scattered into various places. Long-lost letters; famous poems. It's like a puzzle or maze. Turn the right corner and you will be rewarded beyond anything you could have comprehended.

Possession started out slow. The first hundred pages or so were basically a set-up for what was to come. Afterward, the story moved slow, but not in a boring way. It was like each beautiful secret was being slowly, graciously unveiled, as if hesitant to show us. We were met with poems and short stories, which some readers seem to skip, as if it hinders the flow of the story. These documents are the story. It gives us the thought that these two fictional poets were actually real. These writings give them life, breath, a voice. Why skip a part of a book? What's the rush?

If you're someone who easily gets impatient and just wants to 'get to the point', then do not waste your eyes here. If you can't sit and watch a beautiful story slowly unfold, Possession is not for you, and that is sad.

Example: For one chapter all there is is the correspondence between these two poets: Ash and LaMotte. It's over forty-five pages of letters. This was my favorite part. To see a relationship grow in words. The early letters starting out with civility moving slowly towards friendship and then slowly to love when we see sentiments like 'My dear' and 'Yours always'. It was gorgeous. It was exquisite. It makes me miss the beauty of letter writing. A great art form that has slowly died out.

My reaction when I was finished was me staring straight ahead, focusing on nothing, breathless and fighting back small tears. The last two chapters were hauntingly sad. I can't even form words to describe it.

The modern day story was good. It wasn't paper thin or unsatisfying, but of course, my mind was eager for the story of the past.

Read Possession if you're looking for a story that when you reach the end, you will be rewarded. You will feel that your journey was not in vain.

If I could, I would give this novel 10 stars. Five stars just does not seem like enough.
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LibraryThing member Esquilinho
It will possess you too!: This book is truly brilliant. To merge academia, mystery and romance is not an easy task, but A.S.Byatt has pulled it off incredibly well. The characters are all fully three dimensional, even the liminal ones, and the poetry and letters supposedly from the pen of the
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Victorian poets Randolph and Christabel, are superbly, passionately and intellectually written. They are worth study themselves, considering the fact that A.S.Byatt is both a poet and literary critic and has filled them with meaning I was too much in a hurry to analyse properly. Maybe on a second reading. As a lit crit myself, I found this novel perfectly illustrated the way certain writers possess the imagination of modern readers. It made me fall in love with my subject all over again. To realise the passion, the despair, the pain behind poetry written for reasons you might never realise until a secret hoard of letters is unearthed is a thrilling premise. I found myself crying at the end of this beautiful, beautiful novel; what a marvellous, yet tragic ending. Possession definitely warrants multiple readings in order to pick up loose ends and strands you may have missed on the first time round. I do intend to re read it, taking more time over it and analysing the poems more deeply. Now I know the end, I will not need to read it so manically! This is worth a good few weeks, if you can drag it out for that long, of anyone's time. It is heavy going at certain points, and those not accustomed to reading poetry may be tempted to skip the poems (don't! They provide vital clues and are works of literary genius in their own right!) but savour every moment of it and you cannot fail to be delighted, saddened and possessed with a passion for these characters yourself.
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LibraryThing member PrincessPaulina
* NO Spoilers were used in the writing of this review! *

This is a book about books, and people who love them.
An engrossing, challenging read with many rewards for the intellectually adventurous reader.

Byatt presents a non-linear plot through narrative, poetry, fairy tales, letters and diaries.
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This striking description of a Victorian era story applies to her own writing in "Possession":

"It is like a huge, intricately embroidered tapestry in a shadowed stone hall, on which all sorts of strange birds and beasts and elves and demons creep in and out of thickets of thorny trees and occasional blossoming glades. Fine patches of gold stand out in the gloom, sunlight and starlight, the sparkle of jewels or human hair or serpents' scales. Firelight flickers, fountains catch light. All the elements are in perpetual motion, fire consuming, water running, air alive and the earth turning..."

Major themes include the nature of being a writer, feminism, creationism vs. evolution, mythology as a reflection of human ego, literary criticism and the role of scholars and biographers, etc.
( Yes, the scope is huge and a majestic undertaking! )

There is a lot to sink your teeth into, and this is a book to be savored. Don't skip the poetry and flowery Victorian passages. They may be challenging but offer striking intellectual rewards.

My copy is full of underlined passages for further reflection or investigation.
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LibraryThing member samfsmith
This novel is a wonderful treat for readers who love good reading, and it’s a remarkable achievement. Part literary fiction, part mystery, part romance, the story follows a group of unlikely detectives - professors of English Literature. The mystery involves the romantic relationship between a
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pair of Victorian poets, and is traced through their letters and poems and the journals of people around them.

I have to confess that I was fooled. I had never heard of the two Victorian poets featured in the novel - not so surprising, I guess. So I went to wikipedia and did a search and found out they were fictional. Not only did Byatt create the modern characters, but the historical ones as well, including writing their poetry and prose. A remarkable achievement.
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LibraryThing member OctButterfly
I thought this book was too long and had too many unnecessary details. It could have been half its size. I skipped all of the poetry and large sections of the letters and it didn't confuse me at all because it wasn't essential to the plot.

The ending was great, all of the mysteries tie up nicely
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and you can't put the book down because of the action. I only wish more of the book had been that way.

It was beautifully written and while some of the academic details were irrevelant, it proves how much thought Byatt put into the novel.
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LibraryThing member Goldengrove
This is one of my favourite books. I love the invented works of the poets and the twining of their story and the modern story. The recurring theme of tower and guarded virtue is skilfully woven into the story through events, myth and names. I've read it several times with equal pleasure.
LibraryThing member manque
A unique literary detective novel. The novel's prose is both beautiful and fresh (a blend of 19th C. and modern), and so striking in its effect that readers will likely find their own language subtly shifting in response. The novel can be a bit frustrating at times, mostly because there are so many
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words that are almost guaranteed to be new to the reader. (This was true for me despite the fact that I have an advanced degree in English literature from a reputable university.) Adding to this frustration is the fact that even better-quality American dictionaries are unlikely to contain entries for many of the unfamiliar terms the reader will encounter. (You'll have to use a good-quality British dictionary, or look these words up online.) This problem is especially prevalent in some of the denser epistolary sections. Yet despite these minor annoyances, the novel is both readable and an excellent read--in short, well worth the trouble of looking up a few words here and there.
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Pages

555

ISBN

0679735909 / 9780679735908
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