A Pre-possessing Romance (Possession, A Romance - A.S. Byatt)

Member Name: floraposte

Product:	Possession, A Romance - A.S. Byatt
Date:	21/08/02 (215 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A wholly absorbing read

Disadvantages: none that I can see

'Possession' is subtitled ‘A Romance’ and is, among other things, both a quest and a self-consciously literary exploration of love in the contemporary cultural climate where the very word is suspect. English academics Roland and Maud stumble across a literary mystery: hidden correspondence which points to an illicit love affair between two hitherto unconnected Victorian poets, the fictional R.H Ash and Christabel La Motte. Roland and Maud (as well as the reader) work together to piece together the story of the affair through the letters, poem fragments, folkloric myths and other sources which Byatt includes in her narrative.

There are two strands to the story, the contemporary strand involving Roland and Maud and the historical romance of Ash and La Motte. These strands intertwine to communicate the themes of passion and possession: the passions of literary discovery and interpretation and the similarly all-consuming passion - possession - of romantic love. Roland’s and Maud’s chance discovery becomes a quest which transforms their own lives and this is emphasised in Byatt’s clever parallelism between the love affair of Ash and Christabel and the relationship of Roland and Maud.

This book is exemplary in its felicitous use of language. Byatt is a writer who loves language and it shows in the way that Roland and Maud (and Christabel and Ash) talk about words and writing and in her narrative voice, which relishes apt description and provides commentary on the pleasures of text and reading.

Summary: