Possession

Rating:
Summary: Like drinking the ocean
Review: A.S. Byatt's Possession will continue to amaze, bewilder, and infect you with its magic long after you finish reading this engrossing book. Possession is about literature, love, Victorians, and scholars, but they all boil down to that hunger for knowledge - of self, of others, of life.

There are two sets of players - modern-day Roland and Maud who search for 19th-century Randolph Ash and his muse, Christabel LaMotte. Reading this work is almost overwhelming at times - there is poetry, mystery, literary theory, and romance practically surging out of its pages. It's emotional, heady, and consuming - an unexpected adventure that takes place in the typically staid world of literary research.

The characters drive each moment of the plot, and are wonderfully executed. This is old-fashioned good writing. People and places come alive effortlessly and remain with you whether you are reading the book at the moment or not. It feels almost like fantasy the way you slip into their world with every turn of the page. As for the Ash/LaMotte literature in the work, I was surprised to realize that it was all fabricated by the author herself. I had thought the writings were partly borrowed from real literary figures. The scope and depth of these embellishments are well worth the time and effort if only to marvel at the impeccable performance.

Byatt accomplishes so much in the 555 pages, that the only way to do justice to the work is simply to read it. A thrilling, stunning work, beautifully and emotionally uplifting.

Rating:
Summary: I HATE to say this....
Review: This book was so BORING! Don't get me wrong! I love literature, especially historical literature. I love British authors. I love stuffy, scholarly stuff. But my goodness! Boring from page one.
I tried so hard to like this story, especially since they made it into a movie and its got such good reviews here. And the storyline itself is good. Maybe its writing style or something.
But I got about half way and gave up. The story as far as I got was about a loser grad student who may eventually fall in love with this feminist over a bunch of letters he found about his idol. His idol is boring, too. I just couldn't strum up interest in an illicit affair between a married man and a fairy tale writer. So? I didn't care for the characters, "historical" or otherwise. I guess I'll wait for the movie to come out. I hope its not as 'long' as the book. I just want people to be forewarned that its not what they expect. Its not an easy flowing, cushy romance. Its stilted and long winded and rambling, this story. But try it! You may feel differently.
I'm just sorry I missed out on whatever everybody else seemed to get from this???....

Rating:
Summary: Couldn't get into the first half of the book
Review: Like many other people, I found the first half of the book difficult to read. I found it boring and it seemed to drag on with no sense of direction. Roland and Maud were two-dimensional to me, I didn't feel like I knew or understood the characters. I was thinking of giving up altogether, when I started the second half of the story. Things started to pick up from there - the story started coming together, things started making sense, and I actually started enjoying the book instead of just slogging through it. For those of you who don't like the poetry, or if the poetry means nothing to you, you can probably afford to skip it. I didn't read a lot of the poetry as it didn't seem to give any vital information I needed to understand the plot of the book. Do read the letters and diaries though, they contain information you need to know. I thought the ending was absolutely beautiful. So overall, the book was worth reading but the first half was hard work.

Rating:
Summary: Enthralling, but...
Review: Without doubt, Byatt's much-beloved Possession is a tremendous achievement, creating two enthralling romances and believably spanning centuries, conjuring from scratch the life and work of two legendary poets who never existed. From the outset, the entirely original pairing of wan academics Roland and Maud fascinates -- the eventual coming together of these two to whom loneliness is not necessarily a curse feels both novel and true.

The brutal and rhapsodic affair between Victorian poets Ash & Christabel is (knowlingly) more the stuff of melodrama, but told through letters and diaries, their forceful and particular personalities make them as interesting as the neurotic scholars.

There is much beside the terrific characters that fascinates in this rich book, thoughts on poetry and scholarship and, well, possession, that resonate powerfully between the two periods. And yet, as the book draws to a close with a winkingly silly "melodrama" denouement, complete with a secret revelation of ancestry, some of its magic fades. Much as the pastiches of Ash & Christabel's major work begin as great fun but come eventually to feel like authorial showing off, so the final chapters seem too self-aware, an underlining of the "A Romance," subtitle that feels like a vague betrayal of the reality of these vivid characters. As if the author does not trust herself or her critical following to accept the tall-tale format of this story, and so must set quotation marks around it.

Rating:
Summary: An intellectual tour de force
Review: Ms. Byatt most impressively gives birth to two19th century poets within the context of a contemporary plot. Her modern day sleuths, scholars Maude and Roland embark on a long journey of intrigue, scandal, mores, and ethics; delve into the past lives of Byatt's creations; and return to reality, changed from the experience.

Rating:
Summary: chutzpa
Review: I haven't much followed the writings about this novel, but I noticed that none of the reviews you publish remark on Byatt's outrageous boldness: she creates excerpts of poems, long excerpts, having already told the reader that they command the careers of *armies* of scholars 150 years later.

Rating:
Summary: A surprise hit for an unlikely reader
Review: I am admittedly not your typical fan of these types of books. I'm more of a fantasy/sci-fi/romance/take-me-out-of-my-own-reality-but-don't-make-me-think-too-much book-lover. But, minus the thinking part, this incredible story did just that. It took me forever to read (that's not a negative comment) partly because I got so involved in it that I often backtracked to double check the nuances that I may have missed. I don't think I could handle reading the "guide" to this novel without losing the lingering aftertaste of pleasure... keeping in mind that I read it nearly two years ago and haven't even seen a copy since.

A.S. Byatt's masterful pen draws you into two separate stories connected only by the latter's investigation into the first. Sound complicated? For anyone else it truly would be but Byatt never caught me in confusion about who we were talking about nor how it related to the other. And in the end it is almost if the obsession has become your own as well. I've rarely found that level of involvement with any other author.

This story is A MUST if your are any fan of plausible historical fiction. And a DEFINITELY SHOULD if you are simply a fan of excellent stories. Don't expect simple but neither should you be intimidated by the more scholarly reviews it seems to be receiving lately. This a book for everyone. You simply take it in to whatever level you pursue.

I'm eagerly awaiting the movie.

Rating:
Summary: A Stunning Achievement
Review: I am stunned.

How often do you finish a book, slowly turning the back cover to close, as the hair on the back of your arms twitches upward with the electricity of mingled pleasure and sadness? This happens less often for me as I grow older, but at this moment I sit stunned for I have just finished this wonderful book by Ms. Byatt and I am not yet willing to surrender the feeling. Yet, I also am urged to write this. The best writing--storytelling--does this to me. Even as I marvel at what I have just experienced, I also am goaded to try my hand at miracles as well, like the child who sees the magician at school and rushes home to ask the parents for a magic set. Like a child I am, to want to sit at the same table as Ms. Byatt, but yet I must, for maturity begins by imitating adults.

Possession is a book about words, so how unsurprising that I was thinking of these words that I would write upon finishing its words. I made mental notes to myself--"remember this passage" or "here, here is a meaning not to be forgotten." I can only hope to do justice to my past impressions of this book in this first impression. First of all, this was not an easy book to read. As I commented to some people when I was only a hundred or so pages into it, the plot so far is the ultimate in boring, yet the writing is so good that I find myself continuing to read. Then I got stuck.

But I must stop and give a little summary of the actions in the book for those who haven't read it. There is a story within a story. The outer story is the discovery by Roland Mitchell of an instance in the great poet Randolph Henry Ash's life previously unaware to scholars, namely a connection with a little-known poet named Christabel LaMotte. The story of LaMotte and Ash forms the inner story. As a character says,

"Literary critics make natural detectives...You know the theory that the classic detective story arose with the classic adultery novel--everyone wanted to know who was the Father, what was the origin, what is the secret?"

What is the secret, indeed. The need to know the secret, to possess it, spurs Roland to track down the elusive link between Ash and LaMotte.

While the story of the two poets is beautiful and complex in its own right, the meta-story of Roland and the rest of the Ash/LaMotte scholars has a lot to commend it as well. Although the beginning seems to be about boring, dry academics, Byatt is actually setting up the characters in the best way, showing you what they are like, and when things start moving later, nothing seems unnatural.

The title says so much. This is a story of "possession" in all its myriad meanings, just as words so often do double and triple duty in the best poems. I am tempted to go through every definition of the word in the O.E.D. and then cite an example from the book, but instead I'll just do a sampling. When Roland discovers the letters that begins the search (and the novel), instead of presenting them to his supervisor, Prof. Blackadder, he keeps them in his possession. The possession of the letters and memorabilia from Ash's life is a consuming interest of the American counterpoint to Blackadder, Mortimer Cropper. Ash declares himself to be possessed by LaMotte; Roland and his partner, Maud Bailey, are possessed by the search. These are just a few of the many aspects of possession in the book.

I said before that I had gotten "stuck" in the book. About a hundred pages in, Roland and Maud discover a correspondence between Ash and LaMotte that fills about 35 pages. Byatt captures the Victorian letter style perfectly, almost too perfectly for this modern reader. Full of run-on sentences--often connection by dash after dash--the letters are of utmost importance to the plot, just as the Ash and LaMotte poems that grace the beginnings of each chapter. However, a modern reader understands how to read poems. The letters I tried to read as part of the novel rather than as letters, and immediately found myself frustrated and bored. I put the book down and read something else before returning to trudge my way through the letters. After that, the book was a joy to read. The poet Christabel LaMotte is quoted in the book as saying, "A writer only becomes a true writer by practising his craft, as a great artist may experience with clay or oils until the medium becomes second nature, to be moulded however the artist may desire." This could very well be the reason why I write these impressions.

I looked at Possession in the store when it first was published and several times after. I had finally made a decision that I wasn't going to read it, based on my perception of the subject material and its length. However, Mike Godwin recommended this book. I'm glad that he did, and I now pass on his recommendation with my own. This is a wonderful book.

Rating:
Summary: A Nuanced Classic--Satisfying til the Last Page
Review: I have decided that after my reading of this book that it is most aptly named. The act of 'Possession' within the book's context is certainly not passive but transcends the bound pages and possesses even the reader. After reading the first 250 pages and having those pages lull and mesmerize me with their utterly beautiful language, the second half of the book moves the reader swiftly as if he/she indeed were caught within the fairy fountain and wonderfully drowning within its swells.
I attempted the reading of this book when it first was published in 1990; it seemed so delightfully written for someone like myself in mind. Mystery, romance, literature, poetry, metaphor, hidden meanings, parallel love stories---what more could I ask for? Sadly, my first attempt failed; I read perhaps 100 pages and could read no more, having made little sense of what actually was being reported.
I saw the Paltrow movie recently and encouraged by the plot projected by the movie as well as the performances of the two actors portraying the 19th century lovers made a second attempt at reading this book. This time I am happy to say I was successful.
Briefly and without disclosing the novel's ultimate secrets, the book tells the story of two parallel sets of lovers: Contemporary Maud Bailey and Roland Mitchell and 19th century poet Randolph Henry Ash and poetess Christabel LaMotte. As an academic researching Randolph Henry Ash, Roland discovers an unfinished love letter of the great poet. Upon further investigation, he finds he believes the letter to have been intended for Christabel LaMotte, another poet of the same time period. This discovery would discount many speculations regarding the poet and his muse and would change the recounting of literary history. His findings lead him to seek out Maud Bailey, another academic who studies the poetry of LaMotte and has a vague family relation to the poetess.
The first half of the book is a little tedious, interspersed with short and epic poems by both fictional authors which unfortunately due to the unknowns not yet reconciled at this early part of the story seem overdone and trivial. I would suggest rereading these with the help of a fable and phrase dictionary once the entire story is in place. My own education although good simply falls through the cracks in this arena or I should say that my memory of once-learned folklore and mythology has been usurped sadly by more modern undertakings and could definitely stand a refresher course. Be that as it may, as the two contemporary academics become 'possessed' by uncovering the entire truth regarding Ash and LaMotte, the 19th century unfolds with readings of the lovers' letters, Ash's wife's diary, LaMotte's cousin's diary, the poems written during the times shared by the two lovers and a third person narrative supplied by Byatt to further titillate what is not spelled out by the manuscripts. As the denouement draws closer, Roland and Maud find themselves possessed by each other as well as the past. This heightening of emotion and awareness drives the reader deeper and deeper into the work devouring Byatt's clever use of different literary styles to delineate the characters from the past until they are full-blooded and breathing creatures rather than stuffy drawing room whose remains one glimpses of in museums. In addition to this is an amusing sub-story of the academic in-fighting between LaMotte and Ash constituents from America and Britain all straining to be the first to make inroads within literary history. Pay close attention to the descriptive names Byatt gives her characters and relate them to their personality quarks.
I found myself reading aloud some of the letters and poems merely to hear the exquisite language aloud and to selfishly luxuriate in its meaning. I can only imagine by the reading of 'Possession' what it must have been like to assemble the pieces of such a book; my hat is forever off to Ms. Byatt for allowing me the simple pleasure of reading something so well constructed and with such a plethora of meaning.

Rating:
Summary: "Romance" or Disertation
Review: Slogging through the first half of the book is definately worth reaching the second half, but I did have my doubts each time I started dozing off. I couldn't help feeling I was reading someones PhD disertation. Intellectual is okay (it's nice to see a book that is not dumbed down), but this is labeled as a romance. The author, in her role as novelist, is surprisingly poor in her portrayal of passion. However, as a poet she has a great deal of passion buried (sometimes deeply) in the poems. In particular, the section on the Victorian poets' affair is incredibly lacking in tension and passion. The book could have been made much better by a good editor.