Search - Possession

A lovely, literary historical mystery!

I adored this book. I wasn't sure what to expect when I picked it up and in fact was a little disinterested in the first few chapters....but then it takes off like a rocket. It's the story of two researchers who are each experts on different Victorian poets. One of them finds a draft of an exceedingly passionate love letter in an old manuscript. Given that the poet in whose manuscript it was found is widely believed to have been happily married for 40 years, thus is launched a delicate mystery requiring careful unraveling. As this researcher follows the subtle clues and trail, he meets the other researcher and together they hold enough of the pieces to find the answer. It is so much more than a mystery--it is a feminist statement, it is an intellectual delight, it is a wry statement on human nature--it is a delicate jewel of a novel that I highly recommend.

In this delightfully long and captivating novel, two plots move at a quicker pace than I expected. In one, set in our era, two English lit scholars stumble over letters that will turn on its head the academic take on two poets of the Victorian era. But villains want to muscle in on their find. In the parallel plot, set in the 1860s, an affair between two poets is told through letters, journals, poems, and even biography. The exposition gives Byatt the chance to write in a variety of genres and styles, though how authentically I can't judge. Byatt draws numerous believable characters and gets in genial digs at academic archetypes such as The Crusty Curmudgeon, The Ambitious Young 'un, and The Meek Bookish Grind. Her themes range from the wellsprings of literary creativity to struggle of women to find their own voices to the export of cultural treasures. This highly literary novel won the prestigious Mann Booker book award in 1990.

This is one of my all-time favorite books. Part literary thriller, part romance. Reminds me somewhat of John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman, which is another of my favorities.

The movie is a great favorite of mine. I am drawn to past and present stories that are twined together so I looked forward to reading this book. The book is much more complex than the movie, with lots of poetry dotting the literary landscape. The characters were more well rounded - you got a real feel for who they were, what made them tick, and how time and culture had an impact on them. Every chapter makes you want to know more about them and the love stories that blossomed at the end of each era were tender and appropriate - and isn't a good love story more about the emotional connection than the physical one, in the end?

This is a tale of 2 scholars researching the lives of 2 Victorian poets. As they uncover their letters, journals, and poems, and track their movements from London to Yorkshire-from spiritualist seance to the fairy haunted far west of Brittany-what emerges is an extraordinary counterpoint of passions and ideas.