Possession

by A.S. Byatt

Book Overview

BOOKER PRIZE WINNER - NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A tale of two young scholars researching the secret love affair of two Victorian poets that's an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, an intellectual... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679735909
• Release Date: October 1991
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 576 Pages
• Weight: 1.02 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.9" x 1.0" x 5.1"

Customer Reviews

Book arrived as promised, but it was filthy.

At least they could have wiped the book down before shipping.

"No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed."

This was required reading for one of my MA in English classes. I was the first person in my class to finish it because I bought and read it before the class even started. I could not put it down! This mesmerizing, haunting tale of romance-gone-awry in Britain's Romantic period unravels page after page. Is there hope in the here-and-now for romance to truly blossom? Or will the scholars of today always be haunted by the past? Highly recommend. And buy a copy for your best friend while you're at it.

The subtleties of passion

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.

Poetry and Prose

It's pretty hard not to be impressed with this thing, with its amazing scholarship and spectacular writing. In fact, I don't know that I've ever come across a novel like it, with its poems and its letters and its diaries and its fairy-tale stories. This is literature with a capital "L," so much so that you almost feel you have to genuflect before it every time you pick it up. The story has to do with a contemporary English "Ash" scholar, who discovers while poking around in the dusty old library, what appear to be drafts of heretofore undiscovered love letters, written in the hand of Ash. Randolph Ash, by the way, is a fictionalized major English Victorian poet--probably on a par with Browning or Tennyson--and wasn't known to have had a relationship with any other woman than his wife. After a little detective work, our scholar discovers the identity of Ash's love interest, who it turns out was also a poet--fictionalized Christabel LaMotte. With the help of a female LaMotte scholar, the two then begin an odyssey of literary discovery, uncovering truths in the lives of these literary giants to whom they have spent their young lives studying. To add interest to this already interesting plot is some suspense, in that other, less-altruistic scholars appear to be on their heels, and also there is the smoldering love interest between these two.It is an excellent story but what is truly remarkable about this novel is that Ms. Byatt has also added large chunks of these poets' literary works. There are numerous lengthy poems by both Ash and LaMotte. There are some of LaMotte's stories. There are the letters themselves, written in Victorian prose, and comprising about forty pages worth of text. There is part of the diary written by Ash's wife. And finally, there is a lengthy diary written by LaMotte's cousin, which solves one mystery and opens the door to another. The poetry is superb, excellent on its own, and with each poet displaying a distinct style. The letters also, which begin in a somewhat dry, Victorian way, eventually become more emotional, and quite moving. On top of everything else, these literary creations add a great deal to what we know of Ash and LaMotte, illuminating their character and making them more complex. Indeed, through their works alone, we come to feel a great deal of empathy for both of them. It is a novel which works on many different levels: there is the juxtaposition of the manners and morals of today compared with those of 150 years ago; there is the competition in the trenches of Academe; there is the suspenseful plot; there is the beauty of the poems and letters themselves; and finally, most incredibly, we see how the poems themselves function as metaphors for both the newly discovered love between Ash and Christabel, and the burgeoning love exhibited by those who followed them. It is also an interesting treatise on art, how it is created, and what in the human heart occasionally allows it to flou

Reconciling Past and Present: Possession, by A.S. Byatt

"The book was thick and black and covered with dust." It is not a coincidence that the first two words of this remarkable novel are, "the book." Possession is a book about books, about the study and love of literature and the intricate obsession with the lives of literary figures shared by academics, historians, and the randomly curious public. It tells the story of a quiet literary scholar, Roland Michell, who finds a lost letter from the great Victorian poet, R.H. Ash, to another famous poet of the day, Christabel LaMotte. As he is an Ash scholar, Roland takes the letter to a LaMotte scholar named Maude Bailey, and together they begin a search to uncover the relationship between the two. It is a discovery that will have repercussions in the academic world and in their own lives. If you tend to lose yourself in second-hand bookstores, are ravenously curious about the lives of the authors whose works you read, or simply love a great romantic mystery, you will love this book, which won the Booker prize, England's highest literary award. A.S. Byatt is herself a formidable scholar of literature who left a teaching career at London College in 1983 to write full-time. One day while in the British Museum Library, she spotted a well-known Coleridge scholar. It occurred to Byatt that much of what she knew about the Romantic poet had been filtered through the mind of that scholar. She mused about the effect that such a single-minded pursuit must have on a person. "I thought," she said, "it's almost like a case of demonic possession, and I wondered - has she eaten up his life or has he eaten up hers?" She had an idea to write a book about two famous authors and two scholars who study their lives. Byatt created two fictional poets, loosely based on Robert Browning and Christina Rosetti, named Randolph Henry Ash, and Christabel LaMotte. The marvel of the novel is that Byatt creates not just the poets, but also their poetry. Calling on her extensive knowledge of Victorian literature, she intersperses the narrative with their poetry, prose, tales, and even literary criticism about the works of these fictional characters. It is, to use an over-taxed phrase, a tour de force. The poems are beautiful in their own right. I confess that my first time through this novel I went to my Norton Anthology of English Literature and looked for R.H. Ash. I was frankly amazed that the author could switch from style to style and write such beautiful verse. The third time through the book, I was struck by the way the poetry also illuminates the narrative. Roland Michell and Maude Bailey, our two protagonists, feel most uncomfortable in a modern setting and turn to the past for answers. As they connect to the lives of the poets through their letters, they find strength within themselves to live meaningful lives. Byatt's genius for metaphor connects the two couples over and over. Notice the use of color: greens for the feminine and grays and blacks for the masculine c

Stunning. Superb. Passionate. Engaging.

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.