Possession: A Romance by AS Byatt
Possession: A Romance by AS Byatt
Random House 2002 (first published 1990)
500+ pages
Possession: A Romance is the story of two contemporary scholars, Roland Michell and Maud Bailey, who are researching the lives of two Victorian poets, Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte. Roland finds a draft of a letter from Ash to a lady friend and soon learns that Ash might had had an affair with LaMotte, which leads Roland to Maud, a LaMotte scholar.
. . . Okay, it’s actually more exciting than that. Roland and Maud’s story unfolds along with Ash and LaMotte’s story as they go on a literary treasure hunt digging up old letters and we end up reading those letters, and journals, and epic poems, and a lot of other stuff besides. Uh. This description is not going well.
The book was made into a movie in 2002, staring Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart. My library seems fond of acquiring movie tie-in versions of books, hence the cover you see here. I haven’t watched the movie. Does anyone know whether it’s good?
Anyway. Let’s move on to the questions from this Weekly Geeks post.
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Here’s one from Suey:
» My main question for anyone that’s read Possession, and be honest here . . . did you skip the poems? (I did . . . and hopefully there was nothing big and revealing in them!)
Haha! The question made me laugh. I did read most of the poems, actually. Well, “read” might be too strong a word — “skimmed” was more like it. Especially Ash’s poems — I kept feeling like he just wanted to show off how clever he was! I did like some of Christabel LaMotte’s poems, though . . . I can’t remember what it was called, but it was about the woman and her lover and uh, the sea that was about to submerge their city? (It is obvious that I don’t really pay attention to these things!)
What usually happens is this: I am enjoying the story and the narrative and ka-blam! Here comes a six-page poem! A sample of an epic greater than anything ever written before! And yet I have no idea what Ash’s talking about! So I usually set the book down at this point and go off to read something else. I come back, I skim through the whole thing, and sigh in relief when I get back to Roland and Maud. If there were anything revealing in the poems, I wouldn’t know — I was marvelling too much at the language to actually try to understand what the poets were saying!
Julie says she didn’t read the poems either — so you are not alone! ;)
Some questions from Christine:
» How did you like Possession? Any favourite moments? Did you see the ending coming, or not so much? Would you recommend it?
I liked it quite well! I wish it was a bit shorter, though — or the poems were a bit shorter, at least! It was able to tide me through a weekend with distracted parents and noisy kids, which says quite a bit about capturing my attention. I was reading the book at a gathering with some university friends at a beach. They all gave me this amused look and told their kids not to bother me — I am glad I didn’t have to read any of Ash’s poetry to two-year-olds. I have nothing against kids; it was just awkward that I was the only one without one, something I only noticed when the boys were being all manly and setting up the barbecue pit and the girls were busy pacifying their children — goodness, when did we grow up? — and I was left with nothing to do.
I don’t have any particular favourite moment, I guess. It was a library book, and I keep wondering: the next time I find it again on the shelves, which pages would I flip back to?, and I couldn’t think of any. (I have odd ways of rephrasing questions, I guess.) The ending — I did not see it coming at all, if you meant the very last chapter/epilogue with Randolph Ash walking down that country lane. I felt terribly, terribly sorry for Christabel then.
As for recommending it: I would, but with some reservations — you really do need patience to get through the book!
And here are the questions from Joy Renee again (I skipped/combined some of the questions, sorry!):
» How was point-of-view handled? Was there a single POV character or did it alternate among two or more? Was it always clear whose eyes and mind were filtering?
It changed. A lot. It was still mostly third person limited, and it was pretty clear who’s thinking what, but that’s not all. There are pages and pages and pages of poetry, a whole section containing letters being sent back and forth between Randolph Ash and Christabel LaMotte, excerpts from journals, excerpts from books written by (fictional) leading researchers about the (fictional) poets.
To me, the best thing about the whole book is how I keep thinking “Oh, Ash thinks he’s so clever!” and “Is Christabel LaMotte ever happy?” and “Why would anyone want to read such a pretentious autobiography!” when I read the excerpts, like they were real people with distinct writing styles instead of all of them being a creation of AS Byatt. That’s one heck of an accomplishment.
» How was language used to set tone and mood?
The Victorian part was very Victorian. I am no Victorian scholar, but it sounded authentic. The different poets/letter writers/people who kept journals/people who wrote books all sounded distinct from each other. The parts set in the modern day England (around late 1980s, I believe) were lighter and easier to read.
» Was the prose dense or spare? Were sentences generally simple or complex?
It’s a mix of both, depending which part you are reading at the moment.
» What was the central or organizing theme? How does the title relate to the story? Was it fitting?
Possession, I’d say. Possessing someone, possessing stolen letters, possessing trinkets from long-dead authors, possessing the past. A lot of possession going on. That’s the title, after all.
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Possession won the Booker Prize in 1990. It’s also the first book by AS Byatt I’ve read, and I’ll probably read her other works if I come across them. This was also read for the Man Booker Challenge.
