Possession

Written by A. S. Byatt

Narrated by Virginia Leishman

Winner of England's Booker Prize and a literary sensation Possession is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once an intellectual mystery and a triumphant love story. As a pair of young scholars research the lives of two Victorian poets, they uncover their letters, journals, and poems, and track their movements from London to Yorkshire -- from spiritualist sénces to the fairy-haunted far west of Brittany. What emerges is an extraordinary counterpoint of passion and ideas.

Performed by Virginia Leishman

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Jan 18, 2005
• ISBN: 9780060797942

A. S. Byatt

A. S. Byatt is famed for her short fiction, collected in Sugar and Other Stories, The Matisse Stories, and The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye. Her full-length novels include the Booker Prize-winning Possession, The Biographer's Tale, The Shadow of the Sun and the quartet of novels including The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, Babel Tower, and soon to be completed by A Whistling Woman. She has also published es of critical work, of which On Histories & Stories is the most recent. She lives in London.

Reviews for Possession

[bernadette877 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I admire Possession hugely, but don’t love it. It’s beautifully written and skilfully plotted, interweaving the tales and romantic (and other) entanglements of both two Victorian poets and the 1980s academics who unexpectedly uncover their correspondence. The Victorian sections are a tour de force: extensive correspondence, journals and poetry written in the period but distinct voices of four different characters. If you’ll linger over these lovingly crafted Victorian pastiches and enjoy the gentle sending up of twentieth century literary criticism, you’ll join Possession’s deserved army of fans. I conclude this reader and this book just lack chemistry.

[therebelprince · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Yes, I must confess my initial dismissal of this novel (10 years ago) has evolved quite a lot, from 2 stars to a solid 4 stars. Marvellous stuff that is far warmer than perhaps I gave it credit for in my nebbishly intellectual youth.

[qofd · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This review is tricky. I don't like poetry, never have, this book is full of poetry. So I didn't read the poems but I totally loved the book, the slow suspense and the stunning ending which was both sad and happy all at once.

[zoneseek-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

"He slept curled against her back, a dark comma against her pale elegant phrase." There, the berlinartparasites money shot.

[daneee0393 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

like :)

[sturlington_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I did read this, and I didn't care for it. I remember it as being needlessly dense and show-offy.

[maxernst11 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ik ben zelden zo in de ban geweest van een verhaal. De laatste 100 bladzijden heb ik bijna in 1 ruk uitgelezen, zozeer wilde ik weten hoe het afliep. Dat wil toch wel iets zeggen over de spanningsopbouw. Nochtans is dit boek helemaal geen gemakkelijke lectuur. Het speelt zich af in 2 tijdlagen: onder literatuurwetenschappers van vandaag (of beter: eind jaren ?80) die allemaal geobsedeerd zijn door de Victoriaanse literatuur, en onder enkele (fictieve) Victoriaanse dichters zelve, in het midden van de 19de eeuw dus. Byatt heeft een echte krachttoer gedaan in het reconstrueren van die Victoriaanse tijdsgeest: het boek bevat ettelijke, lange gedichten en verhalen in de Victoriaanse stijl. Knap, maar tegelijk erg lastig, want die stijl is erg precieus, vol mythologische verwijzingen, en dat maakt de lectuur best veeleisend. De stuwende kracht achter het verhaal is de spannende zoektocht naar de precieze toedracht van de geheime relatie tussen de wereldberoemde dichter Randolph Henri Ash en de wat schimmiger Christabel LaMotte (allebei dus fictieve figuren, maar zowel hun leven als hun schrijfsels zijn tot in detail uitgewerkt); de resultaten van die zoektocht blijken ? tot onthutsing van de literatuurwetenschappers ? tot een compleet andere kijk op die figuren en hun kunst te leiden; en laten we maar eerlijk zijn: het is een prachtig ? zij het schrijnend afgelopen ? romantisch verhaal. Maar onder die queeste zit een grondig uitgewerkte postmodernistische laag, vol bespiegelingen over de band tussen taal en werkelijkheid en vooral ook over de band tussen geschiedvorsing en wat er echt gebeurd is (of kan zijn). Een interessante en zeker zo belangrijke neventhematiek is die van het feminisme, toen en nu, want zowel over het problematische vrouw-zijn van Christabel LaMotte als dat van de vrouwelijke figuren in de hedendaagse wereld valt behoorlijk wat te zeggen . En tenslotte valt er ook behoorlijk wat te gniffelen over de passie van de literatuurwetenschappers en hun onorthodoxe methoden om elkaar de loef af te steken. Om maar te zeggen dat dit een behoorlijk ?rijk? boek is.

[meandmybooks-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Considering how much I hated the first three hundred pages of this book, I was astonished by how engaged I was by the last one hundred and fifty or so. A friend had told me that this has an excellent ending, and at the time (somewhere in the turgid bog around page 200) I just couldn't picture that, since I was completely indifferent to the fates of every single one of the characters and was just dreading another four hundred pages in their company. But she was right!Still, the first half of the book is pretty much unadulterated (ha!) torture. Merciful heavens. And since my 2001 edition of the book includes Byatt's ?Introduction,? I had the pleasure of knowing that this ?everything but the kitchen sink? style was intentional: ?I half knew that the form of my novel should be a parody of every possible form, popular and ?high culture,? when I was asked to review Umberto Eco's Reflections on The Name of the Rose. I had already had the idea that Possession should be a kind of detective story, with the scholars as the detectives, when I read The Name of the Rose, which combines mediaeval theology, Church history, gleefully bloodthirsty horrors, and reflections on the form of the novel with a hero who is an avatar or precursor of Sherlock Holmes.? I loved The Name of the Rose (when I read it ages and ages ago), and I enjoy literary, legend, and mythological references, bits of natural history and theology, Victorian spiritualism and science, as well as the next reader, and also epistolary narrative and poetry, but, unlike Eco, Byatt seems to have thrown in much of this material to no purpose except to dazzle with the breadth of her knowledge and stylistic versatility. And... the poetry. I like some Victorian poetry quite well. Robert Browning, definitely, though not, admittedly, Christina Rossetti. But Byatt's imitations of Victorian poetry? Ouch. In her Introduction she says, There was a huge problem... I am not a poet, and novelists who write poems usually come to grief... I told the poet D.J. Enright at a party that I was contemplating using the early poems of Pound that look as though they could be by Browning. ?Nonsense,? he said. ?Write your own.? And the moral of this story is, Don't listen to the advice of drunken poets at cocktail parties.Beyond the unfortunate decision to write her own Victorian poetry, the other big problem I had with the book was that the Victorian poets themselves, Randolph and Christabel, were so utterly unappealing, and their letters to each other ? sort of central to the story ? were just excruciating. The early part of the book is filled with this pretentious, inconsequential drivel. Letter after endless letter of palavering, ?Oh, kind sir, you must not suppose...? and ?I cannot resist the presumption of imagining that you share my feelings...? and ?Your precious letters are so unutterably dear to me, and yet... .? One longs for Andrew Marvell's directness ?To His Coy Mistress? -- ?The grave's a fine and private place, but none, I think, do there embrace.? Honestly. And the ?tragic Blanche's? journals are just downright icky.The framing narrative (not the right description, since it gets the most attention, but I'm not sure of the right term), of the literary scholars and the academic competitiveness and backstabbing, took a long time to become interesting, though it did, eventually. The characters, initially, were too unlikable. It was around the halfway point that things finally improved. The modern couple became more interesting and sympathetic, the secondary characters started fleshing out, and the 19th century couple stopped beating around the bush (an uncomfortable metaphor after all the carrying on about Freudian sexual imagery in literature ? ack!). The Victorian couple, though, remain unpleasant even as we get to know them better, so instead of feeling for them in their ?plight,? we only hope that the modern researchers will hurry up and notice what utterly self-absorbed, unpleasant individuals they are and get back to dissecting their awful poetry (this never happens, btw).So. This started at a weak ?two stars? for me and ended at a ?four.? A couple mitigating factors. I'm quite sure I'd have liked this better in my early twenties, when I was more keen on romantic poetry and when the trends in literary criticism referenced were actually current (I graduated with an English major in '87, and this was published in '90). Also, reading this in the immediate wake of my mom's diagnosis with an aggressive lung cancer is not ideal timing. This is a book that asks the reader to delight in mythological and literary references and in the woes of couples carrying on clandestine dalliances, and that's a hard interest to maintain when palliative care for a loved one is a more pressing concern. Three and a half stars.

[juva_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very literary. Beautiful prose, but hardly riveting. I'm waiting for the story to pick up but it's hard because much of the action is taking place hundred years in the past and the actors there aren't even together. Lots of letters, poetry snippets, and short stories. I liked it, in the end. It was very satisfactorily concluded, which I didn't expect. They seemed to wrap up every loose end. And it was even happy!

[Colleen · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is one of the loveliest books I've ever read/heard. The words, the thoughts..there's beauty in everything
It won't be easy to find another book like this again.

[kristelh_15 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Reason Read: TBR takedown, Reading 1001, Booker This is extremely difficult to read. I liked that it was about academics doing research. I found it interesting. Byatt creates not only a story about academic research into works by fiction poets of the Victorian age. She writes poetry, letters, journals that the researchers are discovering and reading and tracks these Victorians and the mystery of their lives. It was so hard to engage and stay engaged. Perhaps if you love Victorian poetry maybe it would be easier. I can't say. I can see why she won the Booker because it took a lot of work to write this 555 page book but it was soooo hard to read. I gave it 3.8 stars but unfortunately that does not reflect how very hard this was to read.

[valerieandbooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This novel has a clever premise. Two academics find surprising secrets about the subject of their studies —two Victorian poets — via discovered letters, diaries, and rereading their poetry. And meanwhile they learn more about each other and themselves. Add to this the other academics on the same trail and this is quite a story. I do admit to skimming, instead of thoroughly reading, the poetry and some of the discovered writings — in favor of the action and dialogue -- therefore this isn't quite 4 stars but comes very close.

[dbsovereign · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A love story and a story about literary sleuthing into another love story. Though I tried to read all the poems in this book, one could just as easily pretty much skip over it all and still get a lot out of the book. Don't be scared away by some of the ancient (to us) vocabulary either. The end seemed to be a bit trumped up, but overall a great read.

[mistycliff · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Feeling washed up and worn out, Randolph Henry Ash scholar, Roland, is about to throw in the towel. His girlfriend, Val (a former scholar, herself), has found a “sensible” job and wishes Roland would just do the same.Things change, one afternoon, when lo and behold, Roland stumbles across a piece of Ash’s past that will send his colleagues and competitors into a whirlwind chase for the glory of bragging rights and the hope of historically charged romance.Though the book is well written and incredibly layered, there was depth lacking, for me at least. Despite weighing in at over 550 pages, it seemed a little bit rushed. It might have been better served to have been played out in a series or, at least, two books.That said, I obviously would have read more of it, had there been more to read.I enjoyed the characters a great deal and was not bothered by the three-dimensional, noir-like villains (they actualy made me smile, a lot). The true beauty was not in present day (well, 1990′s present day) character development but in the evolution of the characters not shown: Ash and his literary correspondent as the subjects of the academic artifacts.Of course, as any fine writer accomplishes, Byatt succeeds in at least some transfer of life altering change from the subject of study to those doing the study. The book watches those wandering in the badlands of rejected academia come around to the spark they once had. It also sees several lives, formerly entrenched in walled confinements of emotionally devoid solitude open up to receive love through unexpected paths.Over all, I think it was a fine read if not as fleshed out as it could have been and has encouraged me to read a little bit more of Byatt’s work, down the road. It has also given me a bit of a different view regarding the wide variety picked for Booker winners, each year as Finkler and The Sea differ greatly from Possession.

[cmsharkey · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Really slow start, but it gets 4 stars because I absolutely loved the ending.

[pilgrimjess · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

"Think of this-that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.""Possession" — physical, spiritual and emotional — is the focus of this Booker Prize winning novel.When Roland Michel, an under-employed academic, stumbles upon a long forgotten letter whilst working in the British Library from renowned Victorian poet Randolf Henry Ash to a mystery woman that hints of a secret extra-marital relationship. Roland suddenly feels the urge to track down the unknown female and soon comes to suspect that the likely recipient was fellow poet Christobel LaMotte. His ongoing research leads him to meet fellow academic and distant relative of Miss LaMotte, Maude Bailey. Together Roland and Maude embark on a quest to discover the truth, piecing the story together from a variety of sources, including letters, journal entries and field trips to Yorkshire and France but soon come to realise that other forces are also keen to find out what they have unearthed.Ostensibly this is a cross between a literary detective story where the lead characters follow a trail of clues to uncover a secret and a romance adventure tale."Literary critics make natural detectives."Byatt skilfully weaves these two stories together but she also aske whether when a writer dies, should their private lives die with them? Or should they become the possessions of academics and enthusiasts, to be collected, catalogued and analysed like laboratory specimens. A question which seems to resonate even today in the social media age. Should our internet posts die with us or will they live forever in the ether?Byatt’s employs multiple narrative voices and styles within this book including poems which she wrote herself. Unfortunately I'm no fan of poetry (unless written by Seamus Heaney) as I find them generally tedious and consequently ended up skimming over them. I also found large segments of the letters between the two Victorians really dull and skimmed over these as well. All in all whilst I can admire Byatt's versatility as an writer I cannot in all honesty say that I enjoyed this book but I did at least finish it.

[curioussquared · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Roland Michell is an academic barely scraping by as a researcher, an expert on the poet Randolph Henry Ash. One day, he finds what he believes to be a previously unknown draft of a letter from Ash to an unnamed woman, who he determines from other sources to be the poet Christabel LaMotte. Not certain what exactly the letter means but with a gut feeling that it might be important, Roland does something he's never thought of doing before and takes the letter from the British Museum. Hot on the trail and determined to see if he can learn more about Ash and LaMotte's relationship, he meets Maud Bailey, a LaMotte scholar, and together they manage almost accidentally to gain access to LaMotte's ancestral home -- where amazingly, hidden away, they uncover Ash and LaMotte's passionate, previously entirely unknown correspondence. As Maud and Roland frantically continue their research, lying about their whereabouts to other scholars in their fervor to keep what they have found under wraps and solely their own, something blossoms between them. But other scholars are becoming suspicious, and it won't be long before Roland and Maud have to come clean about their discoveries. I tried to read this book for the first time ages ago, when I was in college, and bounced off it then -- perhaps it was too close to home at the time. This time, I absolutely loved it. Byatt has so intricately crafted these interweaving stories and histories that I almost have trouble remembering that Ash and LaMotte weren't real poets. The book is composed of various types of prose -- the present day narrative, the past narrative, the letters themselves, various poetic works by both Ash and LaMotte, and a journal of a relative of LaMotte's, to name a few. I'm actually glad I listened to the audiobook because it's very possible I could have been bogged down by some of the poetry in print -- I enjoy shorter poetry, but can find longer works challenging. (Yes, I'm that person who skips all the songs when I read LOTR, sue me.) Possession is subtitled "a romance" -- but it's really multiple romances, wrapped up in a mystery, with a dose of historical fiction to tie it together, all written in the most intricate, lovely prose, and plotted and put together with exquisite detail. 5 stars.

[kathleen828 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book reminded me of James Joyce's Ulysses. Not because of any similarities in style or plot, but because it was clearly crafted as a work of art by a very gifted creator. Byatt has filled this story with sympathetic characters (Blanche), complicated characters (pretty much everyone else,) academic politics, poetry, several love stories, a mystery and unifying solutions and resolutions to everything in the end.Sadly, for me, what she did not do was cause me to care about the characters' fates. And isn't that the job of the author? To engage the reader so that you care about what happens to the people. I recently read Corelli's Mandolin. It was very similar to this in the complexity and artistry of its plotting and language. And I loved those people and grieved and wept with them when tragedy caused them pain. I really didn't care what happened to anybody in this book, nor was I excited by the discovery of the letters, or the revelation that Maud was the key. The only moving scene in the whole book was the epilogue when Ash finds and talks with his daughter. That was a fitting coda. So 4 stars from me for intricate plotting and interesting poetry, but not 5. That would have required characters with life.

[amerynth · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed the way A.S. Byatt's novel "Possession" slowly unfolded the story of two Victorian-era poets -- Christabel LaMotte and Randolph Ash. Two scholars who have taken a deep look at the poet's work in the 1980's and try to prove a link between the two. The story was completely up my alley and I always enjoy the way that Byatt's writing and phrasing paints a scene. This a fun read for me, though I can see that it might not appeal to everyone.

[charon07 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Intellectual, lyrical, with one of the most perfect endings of any novel I've ever read.

[clara53_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The agonizing search for old manuscripts that would eventually lead to a striking discovery, colorful characters (both the modern and the Victorian ones) including two romances - two couples, both in circumstances not exactly prone to easy relationships,  as well as quite an engrossing plot with a spectacular denouement - all this should  have been right up my alley, but it wasn't for some reason, not completely at least... Can't put a finger on it... It's as if there was something superfluous there, overinflated, maybe the poems that A.S.Byatt attributed to her two invented Victorian poets/lovers (?).. There is a lot to admire, of course. I was moved by the suicide note of Christabel's lady friend, also the diaries were written in a genuinely Victorian way, among other things. But as a whole, it just didn't work for me. And yet - Byatt's effort in this novel was very ambitious, to say the least. I have to admit that.

[streamsong_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Roland Michell seems to be at a dead end. He has a newly minted PhD, having continued research for his mentor on Randolph Ash, a Victorian poet. But it’s unlikely Roland’s mentor will offer him a job, and Roland’s marriage is failing. His wife resents having given up her own literary career to support them both.Then Roland, doing a bit of research in a rare book room, finds a book that once belonged to the great poet himself. It has undiscovered marginalia – handwritten notes in the margins - and an original letter to an unknown lover. Somehow, against all his training, Roland steals the letter and embarks on his own research.He is led to Maud Bailey, a researcher specializing in Victorian “fairy poetess” Christabel La Motte. Although La Motte’s works are fairly obscure, she is renowned in feminist literary circles for having a long-term lesbian relationship in the Victorian era. But what caused her lover to take her own life?Roland and Maud’s quest for information lead them to a derelict mansion, rocky coasts, and even a séance. And eventually, they also discover each other. All the time they know their shocking discoveries cannot remain their own and must belong to the world of research and whichever of the tangled heirs truly own the papers and the story.This novel took a while for me to warm up to and enjoy. There are two alternating time periods- the Victorian and the current mystery which at times reads almost like a detective novel. The Victorian prose and poetry were hard for me to read and keep my attention “Oh No! Here comes another chapter of Roland Ash’s poetry!” I would moan to myself. But by halfway through the book, I was caught in the story and found it very satisfying after all. Still, I can’t see myself rereading it anytime soon.

[dmturner · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I listened to the audiobook in the car, mile by mile, sometimes for twenty minutes and sometimes for hours on end. Virginia Leishman's clear, precise English-accented voice is a good match for Byatt's slow, often complex style. With its digressions into poetry, correspondence, literary analysis, concurrent love affairs a century apart, scholarly feuds, and all the possible variants of meaning of the word "possession," the book makes an improbable best seller, and in fact I had a hard time getting started when I tried to read it in print. Initially, the present-day young man who is the protagonist was such a wet rag I had a hard time mustering up any enthusiasm for his living quarters, his relationship, his impulse to steal which sets the events in motion, and his thoroughly thwarted existence. However, the book steadily accreted into a complex, slowly spinning whole world that began to make sense and to interlock. Perhaps the stormy climax resolved all the threads a tad too tidily, letting the air gently out of the the conflict among the researchers, but the little redemption of the last chapter struck like a humming bell.

As for the story of those long-gone people that the protagonist and his green-clad companion Maud (a scholar of liminality) were investigating, I never would have thought I could feel so strongly about a Christina Rossetti-like Victorian lesbian poet who just wanted to be left alone and a famous bearded Victorian gentleman who was as popular as Tennyson and who could not leave her be.

Through Byatt's writing so often runs the theme of the boundary fences around a woman's options; it seemed, here, that everyone, man and woman, today and yesterday, is likewise fenced in.

It's a mystery and a slow meditation all at once, and I am glad I was able to read the whole thing. I love Byatt's short stories and I was happy I loved this book as well.

[fromthecomfychair · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It took awhile to get into this Booker Prize winner, with its combination of contemporary narrative style, Victorian writing style, and long narrative Victorian poems, but I'm glad I did.Two academics, studying two Victorian poets, are drawn together by a search for information about a possible secret relationship between the poets. Several academics studying the same poets, and a literary collector with deep pockets discover that the two academics, Maud and Roland, have found something new, and proceed to follow them to Brittany and then to Lincoln. Although I didn't laugh out loud, the climax of the search is pretty outrageously funny. This is a book I need to read twice. I might skip the poems, or not. There's a lot of great writing and story telling in Possession.

[cbl_tn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Randolph Henry Ash researcher Roland Michell discovers the draft of a letter from Ash to an unknown woman. Michell is convinced he is the first person to lay eyes on the letter since Ash placed it inside a book. Michell’s research leads him to Maud Bailey, a scholar and a distant relative of the female poet to whom Ash’s letter was addressed. Roland and Maud join forces to investigate a long-secret relationship that will change scholarship on both authors.Byatt does such a credible job of creating the lives and works of her fictional Victorian poets that it’s hard to believe they were not real people. She includes excerpts from their works, letters, and journals, and she even includes critical comments on their works. The pacing of the literary mystery is perfect, with a final twist at the end that left me with tears of joy.

[naggedman · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

At more than 500 small-print pages this is not a book to be taken lightly in any sense, and not to be taken up at all unless you positively enjoy reading yards and yard of iambic pentameters, the poetry of the author's invented Victorian poet.That aside I found it hard going at times but impossible to put down. I also found it difficult to believe the author had genuinely invented all those lines of poetry and had to (in my ignorance of Victorian literature) resist the temptation to check whether Ash and his Cristabel were real people who wrote bad and now forgotten verse!

[herenya_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

There are two words which explain why it took me so long to read this book. The first is “possession”, which so often has negative connotations -- “possessed” and “possessive” are used when someone has taken control of, or is otherwise claiming ownership of, something that isn’t theirs, or isn’t theirs alone. (I was curious to see if the film adaptation was on Netflix. It isn’t, so so my search just brought up a list of supposedly-related titles: all horror films. Not what I was looking for!) The second word is “affair”. I want fidelity in fictional relationships.Possession is about two English scholars investigating a relationship between two Victorian poets. It begins when Roland discovers unaddressed drafts of a letter tucked into a book owned by Randolph Henry Ash and sets out to find out who Ash was writing to. I expected that this would be a story I’d take a while to warm to, like the 19th century fiction I read at university. It wasn’t. I read Possession with delight, then disappointment, and then with an urgency that surprised me and then, finally, with bittersweet pleasure. I read Possession with a set of post-it flags, so I could bookmark all the passages I liked, and once I finished it, I bought a copy and carefully transferred those flags across. Possession is about things I feel strongly about. It reminded me of some of the British books which made the biggest impression on me growing up, and also of the best bits of my university experience: libraries and poetry and fairytales and how the academic world views women of the past. It’s about the joys of language and of narratives. It is a story about the possession of information and the possession of others’ possessions. It’s about the desires which drive these characters as they pursue letters, relationships, answers, ownership, secrecy. It is a story about knowing, and about how difficult it is to know the full story. This plays out in the way Roland and Maud uncover Randolph and Christabel’s story in pieces, like a puzzle; they find all the main pieces, in the end, but not always in chronological order and there are still gaps, and things which are hinted at but never confirmed. I mentioned disappointment: for a while I wondered if there would be different explanations for why certain characters make certain choices, explanations which would allow the story to take a particular direction without people getting hurt. This is not what happens. But ultimately I appreciate that Possession doesn’t shy away from showing the pain which arises from those choices; it acknowledges the uncomfortable complexities.I like the parallels between the characters in the past and in the present, and how those parallels are themes and variations. … I have a lot of thoughts and feelings, more than I have articulated here. Well, you will say, you are too busy writing the poetry itself, to require employment as a Muse. I had not thought the two were incompatible -- indeed they might even be thought to be complementary. But you are adamant.

[jonfaith · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Possession is exactly that, an exhilarating capture of that readerly surrender. There are elements of obsession in Byatt's detective of letters saga, but such isn't the soul. The focus here isn't on the pathological. The draughts of language which overtake us like some miner's canary flow. The scholar and the poet face each other across the divide. Time's passage and vanity blur the causal arrows. The readers remain the beneficiaries.

Please don't view the film adaptation. Thank you.

[deldevries · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Not sure why this is a new classic. Slow and not very interesting.

[iansales_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I’m not sure how long I’ve had this book. I’ve a feeling my parents gave it me when they lived in the Middle East, and they moved back to the UK in the late 1990s… (Ah. I just checked and they gave it me in 2002… so after we’d all returned to the UK. See, keeping records is a good thing.) Anyway, it’s been hanging around in my book collection for over a decade. I watched the film adaptation several years ago – featuring two US actors, Gwyneth Paltrow playing a Brit and Aaron Eckhart playing a Brit character that had been rewritten as an American (but Trevor Eve plays the novel’s only American character) – and remember being unimpressed. There are films that are better than the novels they’re adapted from – such as, Marnie, The Commitments, and, er, All That Heaven Allows – but they’re rare. Possession isn’t one of them. The book is much superior, even if it dies “reproduce” much of its subject’s poetry, which is really quite bad. An academic, Roland Michell, studying the Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash comes across mention of a woman encountered by Ash, Christabel LaMotte, and decides to look her up. This brings him into contact with Maud Bailey, an academic specialising in the poetry of LaMotte. Together, they track down a series of letters between the two, which suggest not only that Ash and LaMotte had an affair, but that some of Ash’s later poetry was directly inspired by LaMotte, and uncovers consequences which impact Bailey and Michell themselves. The book is structured as a straight narrative in the present day, interspersed with correspondence and journal entries from various of the Victorian characters, and even poetry from Ash and LaMotte. Although published in 1990, the present-day narrative reads like it’s set in the early 1980s, which feels odd, and the only year mentioned, 1988, is implied to be some time in the future, The prose is by turns fussy and glib – and Byatt seems to enjoy describing domestic bathrooms in excessive detail – and while the historical bits appear extremely well-researched, something about the correspondence between Ash and LaMotte smells a little too coy and arch to really convince. It doesn’t help that Ash’s poetry, as reproduced, is pretty awful. LaMotte’s is not much better. True, I’m no expert on Victorian poetry – I much prefer poetry from the 1930s and 1940s – but the excerpts from Ash’s epic poetry are not impressive. Possession was widely lauded on publication and won the Booker Prize. Even now, it is held in high regard. It’s undoubtedly a clever novel, and makes an excellent fist of its conceit. The meta-fiction/palimpsest nature of the narrative is something that appeals to me, although such narratives run the risk of being boring in parts and Possession unfortunately fails to avoid that. I suspect it’s a consequence of the structure – over-dramatising such narrative inserts would probably impact their verisimilitude. As a literary fiction novel, I’ve read better; as an historical meta-fictional novel, I’ve read better. But it’s still very good. Recommended.