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Possession

A Romance

By A.S. Byatt

(151)

| Others | 9781417718597

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Book Description


Hailed by The New York Times Book Review as "a gifted observer, able to discern the exact details that bring whole worlds into being" and "a storyteller who could keep a sultan on the edge of his throne for a thousand and one nights," A. S. Byatt writes some of the most engaging and skillContinue


Hailed by The New York Times Book Review as "a gifted observer, able to discern the exact details that bring whole worlds into being" and "a storyteller who could keep a sultan on the edge of his throne for a thousand and one nights," A. S. Byatt writes some of the most engaging and skillful novels of our time. Time magazine calls her "a novelist of dazzling inventiveness."
        
Possession, for which Byatt won England's prestigious Booker Prize, was praised by critics on both sides of the Atlantic when it was first published in 1990. "On academic rivalry and obsession, Byatt is delicious. On the nature of possession—the lover by the beloved, the biographer by his subject—she is profound," said The Sunday Times (London). The New Yorker dubbed it "more fun to read than The Name of the Rose . . . Its prankish verve [and] monstrous richness of detail [make for] a one-woman variety show of literary styles and types." The novel traces a pair of young academics—Roland Michell and Maud Bailey—as they uncover a clandestine love affair between two long-dead Victorian poets. Interwoven in a mesmerizing pastiche are love letters and fairytales, extracts from biographies and scholarly accounts, creating a sensuous and utterly delightful novel of ideas and passions.
        
With an Introduction by the author that describes the novel's origins and its twenty-year gestation, this Modern Library edition is a handsome keepsake for fans of Possession—new and old alike.

Critics

  • Fantasy world

    The declaration on the title page of Possession suggests that this is a peculiar kind of novel, operating by special rules. Possession: A Romance, its full title announces, as if proclaiming its difference from the usual run of novels. Already we mig ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

  • Paper weight

    Possession is a novel about letters: their discovery, their possession, the stories they tell. "They wrote a lot, in those days," says Toby, a lawyer dealing with "the most ferocious wrangle about a correspondence between dead poets that someone's ju ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

10 Reviews

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  • 2 people find this helpful

    Might be my favourite book

    Probably one of the book I loved most, if not the one.

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    nutsmuggler said on Feb 5, 2009 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

  • Half and half

    The romance of the two dead poets: too much of a Gothic story. Much enjoyed the modern couple's romance, though. It is comic, in characters and its askew mirroring of the other romance. The best thing about the novel is where, apart from all the letters, journals, manuscripts that are cunningly and ... (continue)

    The romance of the two dead poets: too much of a Gothic story. Much enjoyed the modern couple's romance, though. It is comic, in characters and its askew mirroring of the other romance. The best thing about the novel is where, apart from all the letters, journals, manuscripts that are cunningly and diligently constructed to let out threads of the whereabouts of the two dead protagonists, the narration simply tells us the truth of the dead, for example, there's no way any historians would have discovered the fear of Ellen Ash, the wife of the dead male poet, had towards conjugal affair. That is when one truly appreciates the so-called internal monologue, and fulfilled is the fantasy of the omnipresence of the third-person narration.

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    Yenney Lai said on Sep 21, 2011 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback

  • Heavy Reading

    Definitely needs perseverance to finish. Has a very good, tight plot but takes too long a time to get to the "end".

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    msibat said on Feb 24, 2011 about the Mass Market Paperback edition | Add your feedback

  • A modern novel, that won the booker prize and yet I still really liked this book. It was so well done, it was the total opposite of The Historian, or Jonathon Strange, but was actually a book about research and literature and the Victorians written by someone who really knew and understood the perio ... (continue)

    A modern novel, that won the booker prize and yet I still really liked this book. It was so well done, it was the total opposite of The Historian, or Jonathon Strange, but was actually a book about research and literature and the Victorians written by someone who really knew and understood the period!

    I must admit my great failing is that I do not appreciate English poetry (unless read by Ron Perlman) so I feel like I did not get as much out of the book as I should, as the poems of the main characters did little for me. But I loved the fairy tales and the fake scholarly discourses. I love the way the story unfoled, and despite a bit of unnecessary melodrama at the end, I still found myself crying a little at the last two chapters.

    The story was beautifully and slowly unfolded, the characters getting further dimensions and developing more throughout the story, both in the modern time and in the Victorian era. The books wasn't flawless, but I did really like it and will definitely be reading more books by Byatt and do highly recommend this one.

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    Robot-mel said on Dec 24, 2010 | Add your feedback

  • Don't let the romantic aura put you off

    I always assumed that the novel Possession, which was made into a film staring Gweneth Paltrow, was some sort of steamy, shallow romance novel. When I had to read this for a literature class in college, I was pleasantly surprised. The novel takes place amid a richly woven background of mythology a ... (continue)

    I always assumed that the novel Possession, which was made into a film staring Gweneth Paltrow, was some sort of steamy, shallow romance novel. When I had to read this for a literature class in college, I was pleasantly surprised. The novel takes place amid a richly woven background of mythology and literature. It is a layered, intelligent novel with, yes, a bit of well-placed romance. Not only is it well-written, but the plot is a very compelling mystery that spans centuries. I couldn't put it down until I'd finished it. Fantastic read.

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    currerbell said on Oct 28, 2010 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

  • I loved the quality of the writing and the writerly skill on display in the various styles and periods of writing carried off in this novel are very impressive.

    The love story between two unlovely university literary academics is unengaging and I tired of the detailed trivia of professional ca ... (continue)

    I loved the quality of the writing and the writerly skill on display in the various styles and periods of writing carried off in this novel are very impressive.

    The love story between two unlovely university literary academics is unengaging and I tired of the detailed trivia of professional career making that is the context of the narrative.

    Maybe to be picked up again another time

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    huntch said on Nov 30, 2009 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

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