Possession : A Romance

Rating:
Summary: Very, Very Beautiful, but Lacks Passion
Review: For me, POSSESSION was a special book. I thought it was extremely well-written, heartbreakingly gorgeous and I loved the intertwining love stories. One of these love stories involves two rather obscure nineteenth century English poets (Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel La Motte), while the other involves a man and woman (Roland MIchell and Maud Bailey), who, in the late twentieth century are researching the nineteenth century poets. It is the interweaving of these two romances that makes POSSESSION so very special. Byatt does well what many authors attempt to do and fail...she uses letters, poems and other devices to reveal the nineteenth century romance...little by little.

So, is POSSESSION a romance? Yes, but it is a literary romance of the highest order. Readers looking for something on the order of Danielle Steele should steer clear of this book. This is a book for lovers of books, for readers who want to read a book for the sheer joy of discovering lush, luxurious writing and an unforgettable story.

Although most of POSSESSION is set in the present, the book still has a distinctly claustrophobic Victorian atmosphere due to the love story of the past the two present day researchers are unearthing. Personally, I loved this Victorian aspect of POSSESSION and wish Byatt would have given us even more of it. There will be some readers who won't care for the inclusion of so many poems and love letters and might even be tempted to skip reading them. My only advice is...don't! These poems and letters aren't extraneous material provided simply for atmosphere...they are essential to a full understanding of this beautiful and timeless book. Byatt has also done a wonderful job of fashioning the letters and, especially, the poems, in totally different styles. The poems of La Motte remind me of Christina Rossetti, while those of Ash are freer and looser in construction. He reminded me a little of Robert Browning (though I doubt that Browning would have ever been unfaithful to Elizabeth!). Of course, these being Victorian poets, it is Ash's work that is the better known. La Motte has been all but neglected and it is only because Maud is related to her by blood that she is interested in researching her work.

Together, Roland and Maude discover Randolph and Christabel's love affair, an affair that is all the more surprising since Randolph was married and everyone had assumed that Christabel had a same sex lover, Blanche Glover, and, as Roland and Maud discover more and more about Randolph and Christabel, they discover their own connection to the long dead poets, a connection that is as fascinating as it will be heartbreaking.

Maud and Roland are quite ordinary people dealing with ordinary problems. Roland can't find a job. He's dissatisfied, not only with his professional life, but also with his personal life...his girlfriend, Val, doesn't mean quite as much to him as she should. Maud has her own problems. She's the very quintessence of the "repressed English woman," even going to the extreme of covering her golden hair lest some poor male find her even the slightest bit attractive (which, of course, she is).

I found the romance between Ash and La Motte more interesting than the romance between Maud and Roland. Ash and La Motte were, to me, at least, more passionate, more daring, more heartbreaking. Maud and Roland seemed, in comparison, a little boring and stiff and this, I think, is the book's only fault and the reason I gave it four starts instead of five. For me, Maud and Roland simply weren't fully developed or fully believable.

The way the two love stories twine about each other, though, is nothing short of genius and it's what sets POSSESSION apart from other "good" novels. It's a literary device that's been tried by other authors, but never with much success. Not until Byatt used it in POSSESSION.

POSSESSION is perfectly written and it is gorgeously beautiful...but it somehow just misses the mark. While this is supposed to be a book about possession, itself, it lacks fire and passion. I just couldn't fully believe in the passion of either Maud and Roland or Ash and La Motte. The very last pages are heartbreaking, but in a very quiet way.

I would recommend POSSESSION to anyone looking for an extremely well-written literary novel. It is a romance, but it's a romance for men as well as for women. It's a beautiful book and one that will always be remembered even if it does lack some of the passion I would have expected it to have.

Rating:
Summary: A rich, textured, poetic tapestry - though somewhat tedious
Review: A.S. Byatt has pulled off a stunning achievement with her Booker Prize-winning novel - excuse me, ROMANCE - entitled Possession. Some, like myself, may find it tedious at times, especially if you are not a fan of Victorian epic poetry, with which Byatt opens many of her chapters and fills dozens upon dozens of pages. But quality literature is worth the effort, and this is indeed quality literature. If at first the poetic interludes frustrate you, give yourself time to appreciate them. By the end you will realize how much texture and flavor they add to a beautifully woven literary tapestry.

Possession is the story of two young scholars, Roland and Maud,whose paths cross when they realize that the poets they are researching - Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte, respectively - may have had a brief yet passionate affair. Through recently discovered journal entries, letters, and poems, the two scholars follow a trail of clues that they hope will lead them to a profound discovery. The plot thickens as an overzealous American scholar attempts to woo the holder of these manuscripts in an attempt to remove them from England and store them at his university's library across the pond.

Possession is reminiscent of the best of 19th century British fiction. It is filled with an overwhelming feeling of period authenticity. Byatt masterfully blends poetry with prose in a way few authors can. And as a result she has produced a work of immense beauty that will be treasured for years to come.

Rating:
Summary: Fabulous!
Review: This is one of the best books I've ever read. What a masterpiece. Byatt is just superb in this book. I've read one other book by her and didn't care for it at all. With Possession, she managed to tap into a wealth of talent and imagination. It's about as close to being perfect as a book can get. I was always totally engaged by it, and loved even the poetry she'd written (and I am NOT a poetry fan by any means! .. so this was quite an achievement.) ..Fabulous, beautiful book.

Rating:
Summary: Stunning. Superb. Passionate. Engaging.
Review: Possession is not only the incredibly apt title but also the way I feel about this book. While reading it I hesitated to tell my friends about the wonderful new book that had me so enthralled. I felt as though I was with Maud and Roland while they tromped over Europe. I became as possessive about the letters as the fictitious characters themselves. The book became my three day obsession.

I have read every other review about it and I won't lie and say that the prose wasn't stilted at times. It was. The story is certainly easily transparent and I had guessed the ending of the book 175 pages before it happened.

But all of that is superfluous. I have not read a book comparable to this one in regards to pure creativity for quite some time. I admired the ingenuity of Ms. Byatt with every turn of the page. She not only created believable characters, but she created a literary history that spanned nearly two hundred years. From nothing Ms. Byatt created distinctively different poetry in the voice of two, fictitious, Victorian poets. She also created love letters between the two. She created fictitious literary analyses of the fictitious poetry. For that feat alone, I admire her and this book.

And I would read it all over again, twenty times, for the simple post script which, I feel, summed up the book better than anything I could've ever imagined.

Rating:
Summary: A Must-Read for Every Lover of Good Fiction/Literature!
Review: I put off buying this book for a long time after reading some of the unfavourable reviews it received on Amazon.com. (e.g. that the book is difficult to read, boring, overly long, dense, etc). But in January, I watched the 2002 movie adaptation (starring Gwyneth Paltrow) and immediately fell in love with the story. I knew then that I just HAD to read the novel to experience fully the beauty of the story and its characters. I'm so glad I finally did, and would recommend this title if you're looking for a unique and engaging reading experience.

"Possession" is not exactly a light read, but once you get past the first 30 pages or so, you'll get the hang of Byatt's writing style and be fully drawn into the story. The novel opens with the introduction of the character Roland Mitchell, a young Brit graduate in mid-1980s London who works part-time at the British Museum assisting in research work on the famous (but fictional) Victorian poet, Randolph Henry Ash. Roland's a "penniless" bloke, but he's nice looking, hardworking and kind. One day as he's researching his work at the library, he discovers between the leaves of a reference book (which had once belonged to Ash), 2 letters in Ash's handwriting. They appear to be draft correspondence to an unnamed woman. Excited and intrigued, Roland pockets the letters and decides to investigate this secret life of Ash's (this is because based on the biographies written on him, Ash was supposed to be a happily married man). The significance is that if it's discovered now that he had led a "second life", the discovery would change the modern literary world's interpretation of Ash's poems.

Roland soon finds a vague link between Ash's letters and a 19th century reclusive poetess named Christabel La Motte. To find out more about La Motte, he enlists the help of Dr Maud Bailey (a La Motte scholar). Initially, Maud is reluctant to get involved in Roland's investigation as she doesn't believe there was any romantic connection between the 2 poets (what's more, La Motte was widely believed to be a lesbian). Roland finds it difficult to communicate with Maud because of her cold and distant behaviour towards him (like an "ice queen"). Maud is young, rich and beautiful with long blonde hair (which she hides under a scarf at all times - find out "why" from the book).

Their investigation takes them to various parts of England including La Motte's ancestral home (now home to the cranky Sir George Bailey). I like the scene in La Motte's bedroom (in Sir George's house), where everything in her room is left "preserved" and undisturbed after her death, including a series of dolls propped against a pillow. In this room, Maud and Roland ingeniously discover a bundle of love letters written by Ash and La Motte to each other. I think that the letters and excerpts from diaries should be read in full as they are important to the story. I also think it's alright to skip reading the longer and complex poems as it won't affect one's understanding of the story.

While intensely trailing the love affair of the 2 poets, Roland and Maud become "intoxicated" and infected by the "air of romance" in their investigation and start to draw close to each other. You must read how Roland finally melts and conquers the heart of the "ice queen". It's very romantic.

So this novel gives us two romances (from 2 different centuries) and a gripping "detective" story. What a treat! The Victorian love story is beautiful, passionate and has a compelling and unexpected ending. The contemporary romance is believable, moving and honest. I would opine that roughly, the former takes up 40% of the book, the latter 30% and the remaining 30% consists of Victorian poems and excerpts from diaries.

I love this book. I don't find it a dull read at all! It sure deserves the Booker Prize it won in 1990. And oh, watch the movie too! Both are highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: Fearless, witty and rewarding
Review: Talk about entering into a writer's world...even the faux poetry frequently rises to brilliant heights. Utterly convincing and captivating throughout.

Spend the time to fall in love with this very literary romance; you won't regret it.

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.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful..
Review: I have to admit that this is not light reading. I found that in some spots it was very tough to get through because it was slow but completely hang-in there, it gets better.

What makes Byatt's work beautiful is the language she uses. It's not typical 21st century writing, it goes back to the Victorian period feel that she tried to evoke and suceeds. Her main protagonists, Roland and Maud were very intriguing characters and the side characters were fascinating as well.

I also loved the themes that she uses, male versus female, etc. It was a hard read but I want to go back to it; go through it and I love books like that.

Rating:
Summary: Masterpiece
Review: Readers expecting a "romance" in the contemporary sense may well be disappointed with "Possession". While it does offer its fair share of relationship drama, Byatt's Booker-winning masterpiece makes clear in its epigraph that "romance" is being used in a more arcane, literary sense here: it's an adventure, a hunt, a quest or chase, with elements of love, fantasy and improbability. In that sense, it doesn't disappoint. Indeed, Byatt's tale about the quest of two frustrated young academics to find and prove the veracity of a set of love letters between Victorian poets becomes the locus around which she builds one of the most accomplished novels of the twentieth century. It's an exploration of Victorian poetry, contemporary criticism and the biography industry as well as a ripping yarn. Byatt's range - in both style and theme - is immense, as is the scope of what she's attempted here and she nails every bit of it. My only criticism is that some readers will lose interest battling their way through the extended letters of Ash and LaMotte and the lengthy extracts from Sabine's diary. These sections, though important and beautifully written, are longer than they need to be and a little frustrating, if only because the main plot is so exciting that we want to get back to it as soon as possible. Readers who've studied literature at university level will probably enjoy this novel the most, not only because the poetry will pique their interest, but because the academic characters - with their vanity, arrogance, anxiety and obsession - are so recognisably human. Byatt's real achievement with this novel is that she manages to poke serious fun at the literary-critical industry, cut the legs from under everything from metaphor to Freud and feminism, and yet she never loses sight of, and respect for, those spine-tingling, hackle-raising moments that make literature worth reading and writing. Indeed, she delivers a suite of them.

Rating:
Summary: Indeed, it was BORING
Review: The theory behind this book is good, but, boy is it DULL. As another reviewer stated, it does hook you in the beginning, but then continues on with nonsensical poetry and meaningless tales. Once I got to the correspondence between Ash and LaMotte, I didn't know if I could make it through. I finally skipped the whole section, as well as most of Sabine's journal because poking my eyes out seemed like more fun. However, I'd already invested that much time in the book so I had to finish it. Interesting tale. Maybe someday it will follow in the footsteps of The Princess Bride and publish the "good parts version."