A.S. Byatt

[neilgee]

I wondered if it was worth starting a thread upon AS Byatt.

Her Possession was a masterpiece of romance between two poets forbidden to see one another. I really love that book.

Recently I posted a review of the most recent novel (2000) I've read by her which I will share with you in an attempt to fill the thread out a little:

The Biographer's Tale by A.S. Byatt.

The jury has been out on AS Byatt for me since I read last year's The Children's Story which I thought tried a little too hard to be the "perfect" novel. The other three novels of hers that I've read split me down the middle because Possession was wonderful but an earlier novel The Virgin in the Garden read like exactly that: an early novel by a writer who hadn't quite mastered her craft yet, so it's with relief that I write I am enjoying 2000's The Biographer's Tale immensely. Still life was well worth reading as I love Van Gogh anyway if not quite at the level of Possession.

It's not a novel I expect everybody will like, the tale of a biographer who decides to take the unusual step of writing a biography of another biographer. We find out very little about this earlier biographer. He's dead and he remains dead as far as the story goes, leaving remarkably little behind him besides his work on other people. The narrator on the other hand is supremely alive, a nice twist on the usual format, there's something genuinely surprising and thought provoking all the way through in the careful construction disguised as a throwaway failure. Maybe it's just my bizarre tastes but this one really got my mental juices flowing and I'll certainly be reading more of Byatt's work after this.

[Maryd.]

Interesting Neil.

I've not read any work by A.S. Byatt, but I am most intrigued.

[k.brignell]

I have only read Possession by her and thought it quite marvelous. I do own The Biographers Tale and you have inspired me to read it next.

[papayahed]

I read Possession for one of the book club readings and didn't really care for it then I had to read iot for a class and liked it even less. The characters and plot were just so average. There was a lot of fluff but no meat.

[L.M. The Third]

I've considered reading Possession, but I'm a little queasy because its characters are allegedly based on Robert Browning and Christina Rossetti and I really don't like the idea of using real poets and constricting them into one's plot.