By A.S. Byatt
Vintage Books
555 pages
Available at Goodwill Bookstore
"Literary critics make natural detectives." – Maud Bailey, Possession
There are two reasons why it is lamentable that most people only came to know of A.S. Byatt’s Possession, A Romance when Hollywood decided to adapt it as one of its own. The first is that a film version simply cannot contain what the author so painstakingly and skillfully fashioned into this Booker Prize-winning novel. The second is that turning this literary masterpiece into a film cheats viewers of its essence, no matter how skilled the direction, acting or the whole production process might be – with this novel, it is simply a matter of the book being a whole lot better than the movie, end of story.
To say that A. S. Byatt was ingenious in writing Possession is an understatement. In creating this romantic mystery, Byatt displayed her exemplary talent by creating what can be considered, perhaps, as a mini-library of purely fictional characters, complete with Victorian-era poems, old letters, papers and journal entries. With the text to back them up, Byatt’s fictional poets take on a life of their own, fittingly holding their ground among true literary names like Shakespeare, Coleridge and Tennyson.
The story begins when Roland Michell, a bookish literary scholar whose field of interest is the works of a great Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash, finds, in one of Ash’s lost books, drafts of letters to a mystery woman who seemed to have caught the poet’s fancy. Upon further investigation, conducted mostly in libraries and between the pages of dusty books, Roland discovers the woman is another famous poet of the day, Christabel LaMotte – a discovery that brings him to seek the aid of a LaMotte scholar named Maude Bailey. Together, Roland and Maude, turning into literary sleuths, manage to uncover a love affair between the Victorian writers they each have dedicated their lives to studying. However, what first is a matter of scholarly study becomes a starting ground for their own equally passionate romance.
What makes this novel more engaging is that the plot is thickened with poetry, symbolism, literary criticism, literary analysis, mythology, among the many other devices with which Byatt peppered her novel. Moreover, Possession is an insight into the study and love of literature, delving into how scholars can become overly intrigued, if not obsessed, by the lives of literary figures. Reading the book is a journey into literary studies itself, as the pages unfold and weave into one intertext after another, exposing the process with which literature is studied.
This novel is a book in a textbook in a book – something that can be both its strength and weakness. Admittedly, it is a heavy read, especially if the reader has no interest in literary criticism, literature, or, specifically, Victorian poetry. Those with the patience to read Possession, however, will find themselves in magnificent journeys, all colluding into Byatt’s story: A journey into the minds of different people from the past and present, a journey into the hearts of two couples caught in a parallelism, and a journey into words and meanings. – Althea Lauren Ricardo