Rating: 
Summary: Intriguing novellas in Victorian settings
Review: The first book I read by A.S. Byatt was Possession, which remains one of my all-time favorite books. Then I wanted to read more of her work. Angels & Insects won't be an all time favorite, but I enjoyed reading it and prefered it to the F. Potter trilogy and most of the short stories. Both novellas have interesting, detailed Victorian settings and fascinations (insects, spiritualism), layers of stories (insect studies, poems), surprises and quirky characters. "Morpho Eugenia" is the stronger novella. I enjoyed the ants, William and the satisfying ending. I liked "The Conjugal Angel" better than most of the reviwers here, perhaps because I like Tennyson's poetry. Angels & Insects the movie is an adaptation of "Morpho Eugenia" and quite good. The costumes are dazzling.
Rating:
Summary: Apotheosis of the Frontal Lobe
Review: The four stars are for the "Insects" portion of this double novella. The second half, a yawner on spiritualism, can be skipped. The "Insects" half ("Morpho Eugenia") celebrates observation, intellect, and submission to Darwinian imperatives. Brains win out over brawn; emotion is OK up to a point. Excellent parallels are drawn between human, insect, and class societies, and there are a host of other clever symbolisms here and there. Dialog deftly captures the Victorian mentality without sounding stilted. The movie is so true to the book (except for its misleading title) that the lazy can safely see it without having to spend hours turning pages. But then they'll miss a lovely fairy tale told by Matty Crompton, the Kristin Scott Thomas character. Strongly recommended for the writing, dialog, symbolisms and plot. Schwartzenneggar fans will not be pleased.
Rating: 
Summary: unsatisfying
Review: The literary conceit of the book is so great I admit that I am intimated. But baring my ignorance, I will say the book was tedious. The most interesting question for me was whether Edgar and Eugenia were in fact brother and sister of any stripe since they had different mothers and fathers. This moral question is very much one for our day when Woody Allen can marry his putative daughter who is not a blood relation. Was that wrong? Did Eugenia and Edgar engage in anything more serious than a sexual liasion outside of marriage. This question although presented (see page 27 for description of blood relation) is not even addressed. A lot of work to consider an interesting question that wasn't considered.
Rating: 
Summary: Byzantine
Review: Two novellas by Byatt, the author of a particular favorite book of mine, Possession. Both stories share some commonalties with that work: an historical setting made real through the use of documents (poems, stories) that signify the date of their creation by their style. Both stories are set in the past, near the turn of the 19th century. "Morpho Eugenia" (the insects of the title) is a little mystery story about a naturalist who has lost all of his specimens during a sea-wreck and is forced to work as a catalogist for a wealthy amateur, working through the amateur's bought samples. The naturalist is loosely based, it seems, on David Wallace, the co-discoverer of the theory of natural selection with Charles Darwin. He finds that his patron's family is nearly as interesting as nature, especially one young lady cocooned from the world. But cocoons hide things. The second story is more like Possession in that it plays revisionistic (or maybe impressionistic) with Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and his sister Emily through the medium of a medium (that is, a clairvoyant). The point around which the story revolves is Arthur Hallem, the subject of Tennyson's "In Memoriam," a friend of his youth and the betrothed of his sister, who died on a sea voyage when Hallem was twenty-two. Emily, now married, has lingering doubts about her choice of marriage, wondering, if she should have, as her brother's poem snidely implies, spent her days in perpetual maidenhood. Are we destined to have only one soul mate, the other being with which we form 'the conjugal angel'? Byatt's style is Byzantine. Her scholarship into literary istory has informed her pen to leak the century from its nib, and is not for those married to modernity. Yet her subjects are fresh and vibrant, pictured with painful clarity in the harshest of lights. Her characters ache in-between the lines.
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