This weekend I read Possessionby A.S. Byatt. It’s been a few months since I’ve really sat down to read a novel (I read poetry and nonfiction all the time), and I enjoyed Byatt’s work. Possession is a novel that takes the reader into the world of two scholars who are researching the “forbidden” romance between two (fictional) Victorian writers. Because there are days I believe that I really belong in the world of 19th century literature (I finished Drood by Dan Simmons a few months ago and loved it!), I appreciated the way Byatt intertwined journal entries, letters, and contemporary settings together to tell a story. When I googled the book’s title, I found that not everybody appreciated this story — several readers found the book “boring” and “tiresome.” I do wonder if I liked the book because of the way it shows how academic scholars investigate the world of past literature. I also wonder if the novel was based on characters that may have been real. Everywhere I looked, the summaries of the book emphasized that the two Victorian writers are fictional, but still….
Oh! And there’s a movie. Starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart. I’ll have to see if I can pick that up somewhere….
The Scrapper Poet 
Jeannine Hall Gailey Said:
on July 2, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Possession in one of my favorite books. You might also enjoy some of her more speculative short-story collections: The Black Book of Stories and The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye are the titles of the two collections I’ve read and enjoyed. I specifically enjoyed the way she messed around with the idea of genre-writing in Possession: romance, mystery, academic parody – and of course, it introduced me to the Melusine myth, which is fantastic, and got me re-interested in reading French fairy tales.
Karen Weyant Said:
on July 2, 2009 at 7:05 pm
I thought of you, Jeannine, while I was reading this book! I will have to check out these collections.