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Type: fiction
Status: —
Author: A.S Byatt
Tags: 9
Description: Wow. Unlike anything I have ever read before. At many points while reading I found myself feelingWow. Unlike anything I have ever read before. At many points while reading I found myself feeling confused by this idea. The basic plot line is this: A post-graduate scholar, studying the poet "Ash," finds himself uncovering an until-now unknown correspondence between Ash and another, lesser-known poet, of course with the help of some other scholars. Sounds pretty boring, right? It's amazing how she does it, but Byatt makes you interested in this. She makes the reader feel like this find is as amazing as her characters think it is. Not only does she develop her detective scholars, but she invents the poets they are reading so vividly, that at a few points in the book I wondered if perhaps these writers really existed, and I had just never heard of them. Besides for just being a great story, Byatt has a way with subplots, of which there were precisely the right amount. Never once did I get confused with "what character is that?" Yes, some parts -- maybe a page or two a time, will get tedious, and that is basically where Byatt is writing as the scholars of her novel would; in many small details, Byatt becomes an excellent saboteur, giving clues as to what she really thinks of high academic rigamarole. What is literary analysis really worth, and can it just be wrong, far-fetched, at times useless, and often poorly done, but most often, redundant? ...
2006-12-08
