A.S. Byatt - Possession

I really respect A.S. Byatt's talents. She made me wonder if her fictional poets were real because their letters and poetry seemed so unique and different from the rest of Byatt's writing. If I were to attempt something similar, it would take me many, many years. Mostly because I am not a poet. However, I didn't care much for this book. This may surprise those who link it with Jane Austen's novels, because those (especially Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice) are some of my favorite books, but I thought Possession (It even started with a P!) was very boring. I didn't like most of the characters. The only ones I had any sympathy for were Maud, Roland, and Ellen Ash, and my sympathy for these three was mostly comprised of pity for their crappy lives. I think I would have liked the book more if it wasn't so realistic - if the discoveries were more exciting, if Maud and Roland had become legendary for said discoveries, or if there was a battle sequence that ended in fiery explosions and lots of casualties. Unfortunately, there was a lot more whimper than bang. I still want to see the movie though, because it has Jennifer Ehle in it, and she was Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice.

I do have to say though, I love the fairy tales in Possession. Writing this has reminded me that I want a copy of them.

Good Quotes

"What is it my dear?"
"Ah, how can we bear it?"
"Bear what?"
"This, For so short a time. How can we sleep this time away?"
"We can be quiet together, and pretend -- since it is only the beginning -- that we have all the time in the world."
"And every day we shall have less. And then none."
"Would you rather, therefore, have had nothing at all?"
"No. This is where I have always been coming to. Since my time began. And when I go away from here, this will be the mid-point, to which everything ran, before, and from which everything will run. But now, my love, we are here, we are now, and those other times are running elsewhere" (309).

"He carried out his dying in style. She watched him working it out, fighting the pain, the nausea, the fear, in order to have something to say to her that she would remember later, with warmth, with honour. Some of the things he said were said as endings. "I see why Swammerdam longed for the quiet dark." Or, "I tried to write justly, to see what I could from where I was." Or, for her, "Forty-four years with no anger. I do not think that many husbands and wives can say as much."
She wrote these things down, not for what they were, though they were good things to say, but because they reminded her of his face turned towards hers, the intelligent eyes under the damp creased brow, the frail grip of the once-strong fingers. "Do you remember--dear--when you sat--like a water-nixie on that stone--on that stone in the weeds at the--the name's gone--don't tell me--the poet's fountain--the fountain--the Fontaine de Vaucluse. You sat in the sun."
"I was afraid. It was all rushing."
"You did not look--afraid." 487-8

Here's just a taste of what the fairy tales are like:

"Then came the silver lady, with a white crescent burning palely on her pale brow, and she was all hung about with spangled silver veiling that kept up a perpetual shimmering motion around her, so that she seemed a walking fountain, or an orchard of blossom in moonlight, which might in the day have been ruddy and hot for bee kisses, but at night lies open, all white to the cool, secret light that blesses it without withering or opening" (170).