Rating: 
Summary: The subtleties of passion
Review: Possession is the story of two British literary scholars and their discovery of a century-old secret--the passionate relationship between two Victorian poets, the married and well-established Randolph Henry Ash, and the presumed lesbian feminist poet Christabel LaMotte. The details of their brief affair are discovered slowly and inexorably through a trace of documents and linguistic ties: they are academic detectives.Byatt prose is laced with literary allusions that any lover of British history and fiction will appreciate. Notice for example that Maude Bailey is often described with reference to Yeat's muse because of her golden hair, or that Christabel LaMotte, whose family name suggests "moth." she says "no mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed." In every sense, the plot of this novel is dense, its characters tightly-knit. Discovering hidden meanings within the names and places of this novel was half the fun of reading it. Possession is also a montage of the remaining documents of its characters' lives, which LaMotte says is the end motive of all writers--the longing to be preserved on the dusty shelf. The contemporary storyline is juxtaposed with letters between the lovers, the diaries of Ash's wife and LaMotte's lover, Blanche, and the poetry itself, which reveals clues about the relationship invisible to the typcial, merely academic reading. Some of these documents drag, but then again they create a type of tension. The reader feels much like the scholars must have felt, looking for subtleties that may reveal an entire narrative. Running parallel to the nineteenth century narrative are the personal lives of the academics Maude Bailey and Roland Michell, who stand to turn the world of Ash and La Motte criticism on their head with their discovery. I actually enjoyed their story even more than that of the poets. They seemed more real, more intimate, more subtle. And like their objects of academic desire,they as well battle with the questions of possession, of possession of a person, an idea, or the possession associated with the brief insanity that overcomes the lover. This novel is very time and emotion intensive, which makes the somewhat abrupt ending rather surprising. After carefully weaving a narrative that spans over a century, Byatt wraps up her novel with what can be compared to a chase scene. However satisfying it is to have the clues of this mystery all tied up, it left me wondering about the author's motives at the end. But perhaps that is precisely the point of the romance: abruptly ended, fleetingly passionate, like a moth to the flame. Possession was made recently into a more than adequate film, though some of the essentials have been changed, especially with regard to Roland Michell, who is portrayed in the film as a very charasmatic and inquisitive American.
Rating: 
Summary: It draaaaags...until the end
Review: The pacing of this book was such that I considered giving up on it half-way through--but I'm glad I stuck with it, because the ending was good. The author (or editors) could have easily shaved off about 100 pages from the novel, but oh well. I found the characters too stuffy and too engrossed in their work. Their whole lives revolved around dead writers from the 19th century. Also, it was hard to really get into and care about writers that never even existed, although the author does a good job of making Randolph Henry Ash and Cristable LaMotte believable (I had to look them up to see if they actually were real or not). I think the novel would have been more compelling had she used REAL 19th century authors, say, pairing up Emily Bronte with Charles Dickens perhaps? Now THAT'S something I'd like to see! Interspersed throughout are poems and stories from the two authors in question. This is what really held up the story. While I really wanted to know what Roland and Maud were up to, I had to read 10 pages of some fake literature from a fake 19th century author. There really wasn't much point to reading all that--you can skip right through them and not be the worse for it (I did, eventually). The letters were also a little long, but I guess that's how they wrote back then. All the really juicy stuff doesn't come until the end, so hang in there.
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.
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