Possession: A Romance

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They all assume that the lock of hair in Ash's grave belongs to LaMotte and that he never learnt the truth about his daughter. Not one I'd probably ever read again, but who knows—I can see it being more rewarding on a re-read now having the knowledge of what is to come. Fast paced dialogues sprouting from picturesque secondary characters of the Academia tinted with sporadic brushtrokes of colorful yet haunting humor create the perfect palette for a Gothic scenario where raging storms, spooky cemeteries and ancient legends blend with sumptuous meditation on the concept of possession.

Or is this perhaps a product of the over-excited brain of a middle-aged and somewhat disparaged poet, when he finds that his ignored, his arcane, his deviously perspicuous meanings, which he thought not meanings, since no one appeared able to understand them, had after all one clear-eyed and amused reader and judge? Her novels include the Booker Prize winner Possession, The Biographer’s Tale and the quartet, The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, Babel Tower and A Whistling Woman, and her highly acclaimed collections of short stories include Sugar and Other Stories, The Matisse Stories, The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, Elementals and her most recent book Little Black Book of Stories.I just didn't enjoy the poems very much, perhaps I would have gotten more out of the novel by fully reading the poems but I don't feel as though my overall enjoyment was too much affected. I am only 23, but I'm old enough to be mostly embarrassed for myself at 16 (though I still think parts of this book are smokin' sexy), and I do feel like I'm getting worlds and worlds more out of this book than I ever got back then, and I can see myself getting more and more as I grow older, as the characters do. Ash asks his daughter to pass on a message to LaMotte that he is happy now, but the little girl forgets to do it. The novel concerns the relationship between two fictional Victorian poets, Randolph Henry Ash (whose life and work are loosely based on those of the English poet Robert Browning, or Alfred, Lord Tennyson, whose work is more consonant with the themes expressed by Ash, as well as Tennyson's having been poet-laureate to Queen Victoria) and Christabel LaMotte (based on Christina Rossetti), [3] as uncovered by present-day academics Roland Michell and Maud Bailey. In what becomes the most charming part of the story, Mitchell and Bailey steal away to a magnificent country house, not far from Lincoln, where LaMotte lived most of her life in seclusion.

This time though, I focused on Byatt’s poetry and discovered just how much it enriched and influenced the novel’s dual plots. The two scholars find more letters and evidence of a love affair between the poets (with evidence of a holiday together during which – they suspect – the relationship may have been consummated); they become obsessed with discovering the truth. He could not identify the Fairy Topic, either, and this gave him a not uncommon sensation of his own huge ignorance, a grey mist, in which floated or could be discerned odd glimpses of solid objects, odd bits of glitter of domes or shadows of roofs in the gloom.Running in parallel to this story is the story of Roland Mitchell and Maud Bailey, a couple of academics who study the lives of Ash and LaMotte respectively, who come upon a series of clues that tie the poets to one another and eventually reveal the depths of their true relationship.

He secretly takes away the documents – a highly unprofessional act for a scholar – and begins to investigate.

The character was an American collector who had to possess any of the Victorian poet's memorabilia and he was throughout the novel painted as a two dimensional `evil rich American'. They were both letters in Ash's flowing hand, both headed with his Great Russell Street address and dated June 21st. It is clear, to me, why Byatt was awarded the Booker Prize for Possession in 1990; and that this novel is clearly destined to be a classic work of literature.

It has not often been given to me as a poet, it is perhaps not often given to human beings, to find such ready sympathy, such wit and judgment together. And it isn't just "narrative greed" that makes it such a compelling page-turner, it's the fact that Roland and company's stories, troubles and triumphs are genuinely moving.

major discovery that could rescue his academic career as well as make a big dent in the field of Victorian poetry studies.