Possession

Rating:
Summary: Complex and charismatic.....
Review: Having read a collection of short stories by A.S. Byatt, I was already a fan. However, it was for the work of director Neil Labute that I went to see the movie, "Possession", and only then did I realize it was based on what is purported to be Byatt's most important work. I wondered what could make LaBute leave his sardonic field of original screenwriting and adapt this book to a screenplay...and I must say, with some sadness, that his film was only adequate. However, as he must have, I found the plot was truly unique and the concept of possession so interwoven in each character, amazing. And then, the relationship between the two 19th century poets was so moving, I decided to tackle the novel.

It is exquisite.

First, Byatt, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, discards the concept of a "novel" and subtitles it, "A Romance". Whether she realized it or not, this would result in many "romance novel" readers trying to tackle her 1990 masterpiece, only to discard it as "too long and boring". But Byatt persisted in the classification of a "romance" after taking the meaning of the prose of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who wrote:

"When a writer calls his work a Romance....while as a work of art, it must rigidly subject itself to laws, and while it sins unpardonably so far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart -- has fairly a right to present that under circumstances, to a great extent, of the writer's own choosing."

Here, Byatt boldly invents two 19th century writers. Stunningly, she juxtaposes their existence with real writers of the period...Lord Tennyson, Goethe, Wordsworth, Christina Rossetti, Crabb Robinson, etc. She creates long passages of their work, both prose and poetry (some of it epic) and their letters to each other. It is if she gets inside of their heads and has written, disembodied, as each in the language and the culture of the times. Moreover, she instills their work with passages that clarify what was the mystery of their romance. Passages that only become clear when modern day scholars discover the romance, and can attribute the commonality and beauty in each of their works to their love for one another. Most readers will assume that Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte, really existed, and will only realize they are fictional after checking search engines carefully!

Many others have outlined the plotting here - the parallel story of two modern-day scholars following an inexact trail of evidence they unearth, to document a love story that takes the literary world by storm. Both the modern day and the Victorian romance are between participants (Maud and Roland in this century, Ash and Christabel in the 19th) who are somewhat aloof from the world, imbued by their studies and crafts, and content with solitary existences...almost afraid to give themselves to another in a relationship. Byatt skillfully uses dialogue, the content of letters and poems, and symbolism...the dissection of sea creatures by Ash on his journeys, the stark yearning for the "solitary, empty white bed" that Maud and Roland both desire.

The very creation of this work, which won the UK's Booker prize in 1990, and the lasting regard with which it is held, will make it a classic. So, too, will the richness of Byatt's writing and research, and the thrill of the mystery that surrounds Ash and Christabel...and how it is finally solved by the modern day seekers. It is compelling in its second half, beautiful, though somewhat difficult to read in its first. If you must skim the letters and poems in your first read, be sure to read them carefully when you finally pick up the book again (and you will!) because elements of mystery, relationship, manners and morals will all reveal themselves to you, enhancing the story. Think, too, on the layers and layers of "possession" or obsessiveness that are shown by both major and well-sketched minor characters in both time periods of the book.

A timeless book, with some sardonic wit that pokes fun at academic society, the somewhat boorish mannerisms of Americans abroad, and the clash between the world and the feminist movement...this is a gem, to be treasured and kept on bookshelves forever.

Highly recommended for serious readers.

Rating:
Summary: Wallow in Ornament; Self-Parody; For Hardcore Anglophiles
Review: "Possession" wallows in ornament, to the extent that it becomes self-parody.

Frankly, I was amazed that it found a publisher, never mind won the Booker Prize.

I didn't like the book from the first, ploughed through it because it has won such high esteem, I wanted to understand why, and because I was engaged in a difficult project and the book's soporific quality helped me to decompress after a long day.

In reading this book, I (almost) never experienced, ever, the alchemical reward for which I turn to novels -- the feeling that I am having intimate contact with a vibrantly alive being.

(Almost) None of the characters in this book took on any life for me whatsoever. The four leads, Ash, Lamott, Mitchell, and Bailey, remained, for page after tedious, self-indulgent page, nothing more than cyphers on a page, and painfully obvious writerly exercises. I could see the "[wo]man behind the curtain," Byatt, much more clearly than I could see any of her fictional characters.

Had Byatt been consciously working to push the reader away from the life and individuality of her characters, she could not have done a more thorough job of it.

This is rare for me. I am so moved by Disney's "Pinocchio" that I can't watch it -- I can't stand to see a cartoon character suffer!

But the characters of "Possession" forever remained a collection of typeface letters to me, Byatt's efforts at writing, rather than real people.

Characters never develop their own voices. One character speaks more or less like any other. A departion from this pattern, an American professor, is caricatured as using a lot of obscenities and being very hostile. She is fun, but very obvious. She sticks out like a sore thumb.

One exceptional character achieves life -- Beatrice Neff, a very minor, disliked, and irritating character, is vividly enough drawn that she did feel real to me.

"Possession" is shamefully BULBOUS. Its episodes and shifts in narrator and time strain and sag and twist and droop in really ugly ways. The novel never takes on the taut, gracious contours of a work of art.

Other writers have been able to produce sleek works that, like this one, consist wholly or in part of fabricated communications -- Bel Kaufman's "Up the Down Staircase" comes to mind. Byatt does not do what Kaufman achieved there.

The book, as its title and subtitle suggest, is meant to be about really hot stuff: human passion. And yet, for this reader, it never stirred one iota of passion, one moment when I felt that something true was being said about love or sex or men or women or how they relate to each other. I never felt a moment's tension for the fate of any of the lovers, or their works. I just did not care.

I kept wondering if maybe the book's real audience are the hard-core anglophiles who think that if anything has a British accent it is superior and worthy.

The book truly is in love with Britannia.

Also, great fans of ornament, of, simply, *adjectives,* will adore this book.

The adjectives are the fancy kind: "ivory," "shining," "glimmering," "crimson" -- you get the idea.

The items being described are all fancy, too: dragons, feathers, fairy queens, limpid pools.

With all the gilt and faux ivory, the unconvincing dragons and lifeless fabricated folklore, reading "Possession" is like being in a kitschy gift store in late December. The kind that smells like cinammon or patchouli.

So, if you want a book that loves its own British-ness, and ladels out steaming heapings of faux Victorianian in endless, truly, endless, adjective-laden descriptions of fancy objects, this may be the book for you.