POSSESSION by A.S. Byatt

Possession is a gorgeous book. It is many things: a literary mystery, a two-fold love story, a commentary on Victorian and modern society, and a student of literature’s dream (in more ways than one). From reading some of A.S. Byatt’s short fiction I knew that her writing is beautiful and rich, but this novel is on another level; she successfully writes in a myriad of styles and mediums while crafting a detailed and enthralling story. Accordingly, it won the Booker Prize in 1990 and is included on Time’s list of 100 best novels since 1923. I’m telling you – a gorgeous book.

Possession begins with Roland Michell, a scholar of the famed (fictional) Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash. As he sifts through olds books and papers of the poet’s in the London Library, he discovers some intriguingly personal drafts of previously unknown letters from Ash to a mystery woman. With some sleuthing, and with the help of feminist scholar Maud Bailey, he discovers the letters to be for Christabel LaMotte, a poet of Ash’s era loved by modern feminists but largely ignored in her own time. With the discovery of a whole cache of letters between the two poets, Maud and Roland embark on an intensely secretive quest around England and Northern France to discover the love between the poets that will completely change the literary worlds they both work in. Byatt shifts between times in unique ways; as we see the relationship between Ash and LaMotte develop through their letters, we also see Roland and Maud become slowly but irrevocably linked. For the two of them, the discoveries they make are purely about their personal relationships with the poets and their poetry – that indefinable closeness one feels to someone never known personally, but only through the power of their writing.

This private quest between the two of them, however, slowly spreads to involve a whole cast of academics. The world of Ash and LaMotte scholars is very insular, it seems, and word and suspicions spread quickly. For people who devote their lives to studying a finite number of poems and writings of long-dead poets, a discovery as monumental as this (or any discovery of new material, really) is groundbreaking. So, their quest for the sake of the love of literature becomes a chase to get the letters, a legal battle, and a question of ownership. Academia can get ugly, especially when a big discovery comes along that can mean so much for the careers of so many people. Byatt’s exploration of this strange academic world made me think about academia as a life choice. How would it be to live your life completely consumed by and devoted to the lives of dead poets, as these academics do? Byatt (a former professor at University College London) shows us the thoughts of all these different kinds of scholars and how they try to reconcile their life’s work. Studying only the poems of a long dead Victorian poet, or an obscure female poet, or the wife of a famous poet (as the case may be, according to the character) requires much justification in the minds of Byatt’s characters, as I imagine it would. You have to really love the writings of a poet to make your living by reading and writing about them.

More than any other book I can think of, the title of Possession grows to fit the book perfectly. I didn’t think this would be the case to begin with; ‘possession,’ while an evocative and romantic word (fitting, as the book’s subtitle is “A Romance”), struck me as a generic and forgettable title. By the book’s end, however, I realized how it truly encompasses the many levels of the book. Are these scholars, stuck in the bowels of libraries and academic facilities, possessed by the deceased poets to whom they devote their lives? Who possesses whom when it comes to love? This is especially apparent as the story of Ash and LaMotte unfolds amidst the rigid era Victorian, and they must decide where their hearts lie. Who possesses, legally and for all intents and purposes, the thoughts and ideas of these dead writers – or, as it is, the writings and letters? And, perhaps most deeply felt throughout the book, how much does one truly possess oneself, especially when in love? As Roland and Maud fall slowly but strangely in love, they both struggle with their own self-possession and how they can define themselves in terms of each other and their work. As it turns out, there can be no title better than Possession.

This is all probably more than I should have written about Possession, and yet there is so much more that could be said. It is a dense book, and as much as I loved it, it took me a long time to read and digest. One of the beauties of the novel, but also one of the things that contributes to its density, is the variety of forms it is told through. Byatt proves herself as a poet as well as a novelist by including many of the major works of Ash and LaMotte, from short verses to epic poems. Hundreds of pages go by in letter form, as the romance between the poets is told. Diaries of contemporaries and family members of the poets contribute to their story, as do excerpts of the critical analyses written by the modern scholars in the book. All these different narrative voices and forms shape both eras and all characters, and somehow Byatt makes them all perfectly convincing and informed. And now, onward to The Children’s Book and beyond – I can’t wait to continue on my Byatt-quest.

(Cover via Wikipedia)

THE BOOKSHOP by Penelope Fitzgerald

For a long time, Penelope Fitzgerald, to me, was only the writer whose books appeared next to those of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s in the shelves of bookstores or libraries. I never thought to seek her out or think anything more of her, until I was browsing a list of Booker Prize winning authors on which – spoiler alert – she appears. So, I figured it was about time to give her a real chance, and I took out the only available book of hers in my local library at the time – The Bookshop.

The Bookshop, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize (Offshore is her work that won the prize), is a little, seemingly simple book that leaves a big impact. Set in a small English town in the late 1950s, the novel wraps proof of the inherent cruelty of human nature in a deceptively light and often amusing veneer. Florence Green, a widowed resident of Hardborough for a decade, has decided that the time has come for her little town to have a bookshop, and that she is the one to bring it to them. Hardborough is not one for change, however, as Florence learns through her attempts to fix up an old house to contain the shop and introduce her community to the wonder of books. Even when the fledgling bookshop shows promising signs of life, its customers show interest only in books on the history of the British monarchy and military, not so much in works of literature like the newly-released Lolita, by that foreigner with the funny name. It is not the predictable literary interests of the town’s residents that mean trouble, however; Florence meets problematic opposition from other ends. The ‘elite’ of the town with, of course, some political pull and knowledge of obscure laws, rally against Florence for personal gain. From the time the bookshop is only an idea throughout its short lifetime, Mrs. Gamart, a society woman with her own designs for the old house, manipulates and schemes against Florence for her own ends. By the end, you are (or, I was) left screaming at the injustice of it all.

Throughout the book, Fitzgerald gently satirizes provincial life and the strict social striations of a town as small and enclosed as this. The many characters of the town, from the farmers and fishmongers to the eager children, selfish shop owners and old esteemed hermits, add their eccentricities to the unique, and often obstinate, identity of Hardborough. She excellently crafts all these characters, so that in reading them you become part of this tightly bound community and fully accept its strangeness. Even the absurdities, from the sneakily cruel behaviors of the townspeople to their unquestioned belief is the ghost (or ‘rapper’) of the old house, are quietly believable. It is a strange place, this Hardborough, that apparently has no use for a bookshop. And yet, Florence’s attempt at bringing them one remains hopeful even in spite the cruelty of her neighbors. For such a small book, The Bookshop offers some big insights into morality and human nature and provokes strong reactions. F. Scott is no longer the only Fitzgerald I’ll be searching out at bookstores.

(Cover via)

Writers on Writing

Here is an excerpt from a wonderful article that appeared recently in the Wall Street Journal. It chronicles the actual writing techniques of a number of contemporary authors - where they write, the many steps they take, how long it takes them to write a novel. I find it fascinating to learn the actual day-to-day of so many contemporary writers (Margaret Atwood, Junot Diaz, and Hilary Mantel, to name a few), and to see how different each writer's technique is from the others. Because of my love for Kazuo Ishiguro, I included the article's look at his writing:

From the time he was a teenager until his mid-20s, novelist Kazuo Ishiguro tried, unsuccessfully, to make it as a songwriter. His early career helped him to develop his style of spare, first-person narration where the narrator seems to know more than he or she lets on at first.

Mr. Ishiguro, author of six novels, including the Booker-prize winning "Remains of the Day,"typically spends two years researching a novel and a year writing it. Since his novels are written in the first person, the voice is crucial, so he "auditions" narrators by writing a few chapters from different characters' points of view. Before he begins a draft, he compiles folders of notes and flow charts that lay out not just the plot but also more subtle aspects of the narrative, such as a character's emotions or memories.

Obsessive preparation "gives me the opportunity to have my narrators suppress meaning and evade meaning when they say one thing and mean something else," says Mr. Ishiguro.

He collects his notes in binders and writes a first draft by hand. He edits with a pencil, then types the revised version into a computer, where he further refines it, sometimes deleting chunks as large as 100 pages.

In spite of all the groundwork, some novels fail to come together, including one that took place in medieval Britain. "I showed my wife a segment that I had honed down and she said, "This is awful. You have to figure out how they speak to each other. They're speaking in a moron language," he says.

You can read the rest of the article here.

NOCTURNES by Kazuo Ishiguro

I love Kazuo Ishiguro. Love. So I was very excited to hear about this newest book, which is a collection of five stories “of music and nightfall.” As per usual, Ishiguro crafts his stories beautifully and (appropriate considering their themes) lyrically. Ishiguro is certainly an international writer, as he has proven with his novels (given their varied settings) and continues with these stories. He comfortably and convincingly places his stories and characters all over the world, ranging from LA to Venice to rural England, while using common human themes and passions to unite them. These different backgrounds and settings of the characters ultimately expose how similar they actually are in their relationships with people and with music.

Music is at center at each of these stories in different ways, from the aspiring musicians to the music lovers to the singer past his peak. The importance of music to each of these characters, however, is used more as a starting point to explore their relationships with or observations of others. In more than two (in fact most) stories, we see a marriage at its breaking point and the attempts of those involved to salvage it. We see the progression of friendships and family relationships, and the strains they can cause. Many of the characters attempt to reconcile following their dreams with accepting reality, often with the help of strangers. There are the musicians who relied on music and other musicians to escape from behind the Iron Curtain, both literally and figuratively. But if all this makes Nocturnes sound like a dark collection of stories and heavy meditation on human nature, I have been misleading. I found the stories overall light and pleasant – little glimpses into these musical lives, with their tragedies, oddities, and all. They are often humorous as well – Ishiguro seemed to enjoy exploring the frequent absurdity of life by placing his characters in situations that somehow involved a trophy-stuffed turkey and the boiling of an old boot. Along with these ruminations on life, music flows continuously throughout the collection. The progression within each story, and from one story to the next, has a musical quality to it. Little things, whether it is a character or an idea, come back like a refrain. At the risk of extending the musical metaphors too far, each story seemed to me like a bit of a song heard from a distance, blurry and dreamlike.

With all that said, however, I can understand why, for example, my mom didn’t care for the book. What I love so much about Ishiguro’s novels, aside from his masterful writing, is that I become so invested in them. That didn’t exist for me in Nocturnes. The nature of the short story (as great a literary form as it is) doesn’t lend itself as easily to that feeling as that of a novel. Though his characters were reminiscent of what I loved about those in his novels, particularly with the tone of their narration and reflections on memory, none of them stuck with me like his others did (I’m thinking especially of Never Let Me Go – read it). And yet, I definitely enjoyed Nocturnes. It was nice to see a change of pace from Ishiguro and experience his writing in another form – but I’ll be anxiously awaiting his next novel.