Possesion

A.S. Byatt
1990
Rating: 4

It was painful for me to put this novel down after 180 pages, because Byatt is clearly a genius, but I could not bare a single additional page of the correspondences between the two 19th Century poets who are among the novel’s main characters.

The novel bounces back and forth between contemporary England (and the United States) and the 19th Century, and in this 19th century strand of the narrative, some of it is epistolary, and these epistolary passages were excruciatingly tedious reading. If there were just a few passages of these epistolary exchanges with, say, a maximum length of six or even eight pages, I would have suffered through them, because the rest of the book is so good, but as I waded into an overly-wordy series of letters between the two poets, I got curious and wondered how many pages of the drek I had ahead of me, and flipping through discovered that it was 4o pages of these exchanges, which were as much fun to read as eating chalk.

The language in the letters displays a mastery of that period, but the thing is, that period was perhaps overly verbose. At least her characters were. Not only did it take too long to say things via these pens, but the things that they were talking about were not exciting, and they were not interesting. I couldn’t stand it.

The other quibble I had with Possession, and this was an entirely forgivable and minor quibble, is that Byatt seemed at points to get carried away with descriptions of interiors. Make no mistake, she has a real gift for and command of the lexicon of interior design and furnishings, but it felt at a few points like this description became an end to itself rather than a means.

At some point maybe I will try another novel by her.

There is a reasonable chance that you will be less irritated by the epistolary passages in the novel than I was, my friend who read it years ago said he loved the letters, and if you like or can merely abide the letters, the rest of the book is solid gold, so you shouldn’t necessarily rule this book out based on my experience. If you’re thinking about it, try to find that 40 page section of the book, and start reading through it, and if you’re not bothered by the rhythms of that section, you should buy the book.

Aside from truly top shelf descriptive writing about interiors and flora, I also really did enjoy the way that Byatt developed her characters. I liked the types of things she said about them. These passages were rich and thought-provoking but also fun and breezy.