Review: POSSESSION (Random House 1990)
Author, A.S. Byatt
POSSESSION is--there's no other word--an extraordinary book.
Touted as an "intelligent, literary, and ambitious thriller" by The Times (London), the story is also subtitled: "A Romance." And it is all these things and more.
The main character, Roland Mitchell, is a literary scholar working in the bowels of the London Library. He's perusing a long-undisturbed book authored by the subject of his study, poet Randolph Henry Ash, when he discovers two letters Ash started writing to a woman--one to whom the married Ash was obviously attracted. Purloining the letters in order to find out her identity (and keeping this find to himself, instead of sharing it with Professor Blackadder, for whom he works as a part-time research assistant), he learns that the woman may be a poet named Christabel LaMotte, who up until this point was thought to be a Lesbian with no connection to Ash. Roland's research inevitably leads him to Maud Bailey, who runs another university's Women's Resource Center. Maud is one of two people in the world considered to be complete experts on Christabel LaMotte. Their alliance (an uncomfortable one, at first) grows closer and more intense the more they learn about the relationship between the two poets.
Ah, but they aren't working in a vacuum. Others start to sniff around and figure out what they're up to. Including Fergus Wolff (Maud's ex-lover), Leonora Stern (the other LaMotte scholar), Beatrice Nest (custodian to Ellen Ash's papers), Blackadder and a certain Mortimer Cropper, a nefarious American (the book is nothing, if not thoroughly British) and Blackadder's arch rival when it comes to anything related to Randolph Henry Ash. So A.S. Byatt intricately and deftly weaves elements of the thriller, suspense and romance into the story. But that's not all--because the letters and manuscripts the two scholars find tell a story themselves. Another story of romance and suspense. So the story of Roland Mitchell and Maud Bailey ends up being written around the story of Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte. And the overall effect is--amazing.
A few caveats: the prose is rich. In fact, to merely say it's rich is like saying creme brulee topped with whipped cream has a few calories. It has the flow and feel of the 19th Century literature by the poets being studied, layered with the modern sensibilities of the scholars studying them. And poems by Ash and LaMotte are embedded throughout the text. These poems reflect part of their story as well, since they're intended to show how Ash and LaMotte's relationship affected their work. (As Roland and Maud's joint research may affect their relationship? Hmm . . .)
I usually read a lot of hard-boiled and noir fiction--terse, gritty, unsentimental. But this book was a welcome change of pace for me. One scene in particular, in which Roland and Maud make a major find, was so suspenseful, I could swear it raised the hairs on the back of my neck (not too shabby for a couple of bookish types looking for old letters). And I was simply amazed at Byatt's talent in creating not only the characters and plot for the main story, but writing the poetry, letters, etc., and creating the characters and plot for the story within the story.
To pull it off, Byatt had to switch points of view, now and then--sometimes within the same scene. Some authors will tell you this breaks the rules. But then rules are intended to be broken--when you know what you're doing. Which, clearly, Byatt does.
Which is to say, the book is probably not for everyone. It's not a formulaic thriller or romance--not a "beach read." The book has substance, but substance I could sink my teeth into, while having a story I could get lost in.
In conclusion, anyone who says that "literary writers" (whatever that term means) don't know how to create a plot needs to read this book. It puts the lie to that particular bit of conventional wisdom.
I'd like to think the book shows how well the conventions of genre can work in literary fiction. How they're not mutually exclusive. That we can, in fact, all get along.
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