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Jun 10, 2010

Lizzie rated it:

So this is a story told by an academic who decides to quit that and pursue concrete things. He decides to write a biography of a great biographer, known for his writings about a British adventurer. He obtains a number of essays written by the biographer, presented to us by Byatt, as she did with the poetry in Possession. They're puzzling - they describe playwright Henrik Ibsen, naturalist Carl Linnaeas, and scientist Francis Galton. All very well. But if they're intended to be biographical, they More...

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Dec 17, 2009

Quandong rated it:

Normally, I am A.S. Byatt's bitch. But I couldn't get into this book, I couldn't even get past the first 50 pages. I'd love to hear if anyone finished this and thinks I am missing something.

5 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 05, 2011

Peter rated it:

One must bow to the scope of A.S. Byatt's fiction. Her knowledge is broad; her interests wide; her allusions many; her literary references dense. More impressive than all of these, however, is her skill as a storyteller - how she weaves her academic musings into epiphanies about life.
The Biographer's Tale follows Phineas G. Nanson from the abstraction of graduate school to the discovery of wonder in the natural world. "...the vision of these very real, chattering birds said to me... t More...

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May 21, 2010

Luke rated it:

More a treatise on essoteric knowledge of Carolinus Linneaus, Elmer Boles, Henrik Ibsen, Francis Gaulton, and Scholes Destry-Scholes, with a good mesaure of philosophical argument between empiricism, rationalism, and existentialism on the nature of "things" and "meaning" than an traditional novel with a beginning, middle, climax, and end.

Phineas G. Nanson, the hero of the tale, starts the book as a bored graduate student who is tired of dealing solely with ideals, More...

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Apr 28, 2010

Stella Used Books added it

This novel by the formidable A.S. Byatt initially appealed to me because it’s about someone who leaves graduate school, something I was contemplating at the time I read this (and did). The main character finally gets fed up with po-mo nonsense and decides to research facts. Byatt’s treatment of postmodernism continues to amuse and fascinate me; her excellent A Whistling Woman is another fine example of this. Anyhow, the now ex-grad student decides to write a biography of a biographer. He is obse More...

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Nov 14, 2009

Mark rated it:

In this novel, A.S. Byatt's graduate student protagonist, Phineas G. Nanson resolves a seeming contradiction between writing about life and living life. Phineas struggles with the limitations of both literary theory (post-structuralism) and biography. He finds a way to extricate himself from the binds and banality of literary theory (e.g., continuing to eschew the use of the word "reality" but yet making the distinction between "writing" and "things" through the loc More...

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Apr 23, 2009

Brigid rated it:

Since I liked Babel Tower (and long before that, Possession) so much, I thought I would read some other Byatt and found this one. It was so-so. Again, she interleaves multiple created and existing texts, which is only partially effective for me. I love her work with her actual characters so much more than her imitation of scholarly works or her character-created fictions. In Possession I shamelessly skipped the long poems, which didn't affect the read at all, but in both Babel Tower and this on More...

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Jul 14, 2009

Rick rated it:

A.S. Byatt’s THE BIOGRAPHER’S TALE, is a mystery reminiscent of POSSESSION, although much more abstract and intellectualized. In the novel, graduate student Phineas G. Nanson drops his work in literary theory to pursue the “real,” embodied in his attempt to write a biography of biographer Scholes Destry-Scholes.

Information about Scholes Destry-Scholes, however, is elusive and cryptic, and Nanson can only come up with clues. He eventually stumbles across a stack of index cards and a More...

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Sep 14, 2009

Emma rated it:

So far, this is great. My heart sank a little when I realised early on how much of the book would be spent in the biographer's primary resources, but somehow Byatt is always worth what can be an initial effort. She works you into it ... Byatt's characters live in a kind of un-real world steeped in scholarship and solo bookishness, where everyone is kind of modernly arcane and thinky and obsessed with details. Popular culture rarely creeps in and I was shocked to read mentions of websites when th More...

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Apr 20, 2008

Amy rated it:

Very literary and a bit over my head. I enjoyed A.S. Byatt's novel Possession, but this one I had a difficult time following. She's a very intelligent writer, which I appreciate, but sometimes it's a bit much. Still interesting, though!

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Sep 01, 2010

Paddy rated it:

What disappointment to find mind-numbing mountains of "knowledge" and "faux knowledge" in what started out as a possible romp through the fields of deconstructionists' most playful intellectual games. But haven't I written this before about other recent attempts of Byatt? Clearly, she and her sibs are brilliant scholars and writers, but strutting one's knowledge of others' scholarship weighs on the reader, who wants fresh intimacy with characters, lovable or not. In the end, More...

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Dec 11, 2010

Melanie rated it:

As a recovering post-sturcturalist who is quite glad that grad school is well and truly done with, I loved the premise of this book: Phineas G. Nanson ups and quits his graduate degree and critical theory seminars to write a biography of a biographer. In theory, I admire the elegance of a composite novel about a man researching a biographer who was working on a composite biography of three men who were obsessed in some way with the idea of the composite. In practice, I got bogged down by all of More...

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Feb 20, 2010

Sbaird rated it:

Complicated, interesting, confusing vintage Byatt. The search for Destry Scholes Destry the biographer of Edward Boles-a gentleman,scientist, adventurer, author, and politician is a fascinating start. How much does the biographer add/correct/diminish in the representation of the subject? To be able to take on such a complex individual as Edward Boles equates the biographer with the same knowledge and interests as his subject-so he must be even more of an interesting character. Byatt always l More...

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Mar 13, 2009

Kristi rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Jan 24, 2010

Liviu rated it:

This is another book I started months ago, read some, put it down, restarted it and so on until finally I got to about 50% in small chunks across time and then I read the rest in one sitting.

Overall I liked a lot from it, but it's very unbalanced as a novel - the part that deals with the narrator and his relationships which is maybe 1/3 of the book itself is excellent but the rest which deals with the narrator's investigation of a writer/biographer and in turn that writer's in More...

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Mar 01, 2011

Shayda rated it:

Plotting hasn't seemed to be Byatt's strong suit in general. From her Potter novels I've been conditioned, in any case, to think of Byatt novels as comprising a series of episodes; from Possession, to think of interpolated texts as a delightful game. The Biographer's Tale has hardly any plot at all. It's the story of a postgraduate who decides to replace his academic studies with a world of things, and the newly liberated narrator gradually finds his way to the world of taxonomic specimens as a More...

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Mar 31, 2009

Melanie rated it:

Welcome to the Bizarro World edition of Possession. Where once the literary sleuths sought the mystery of a Victorian poet, now the sleuth seeks to escape the Laputa-like world of modern literary criticism. He wants things - facts - tangibles.

Steered by his orotund advisor (who doodles random, obscene runes during lectures) and stirred by a three-volume biography of Elmer Bowles (a Victorian polymath whose own writings may or may not have been, shall we say, reliable), Phineas Nanson More...

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Oct 04, 2007

Andrew rated it:

A. S. Byatt is a really frustrating writer, in a lot of ways, because she always sets up this massively interesting story that serves only as a bit of decoration for her usually much less interesting actual story. See, for example, the 'blasphemous' novel written by Jude Fawley in Babel Tower, or the children's book in that same work; either story would have been dynamite, but instead we only get dribs and drabs of the fantastic interspersed as color in a massive novel about a sensitive post-co More...

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Sep 19, 2007

Susan rated it:

Byatt has a way of making her characters seem like butterfly specimens pinned to a display. You may admire their intricacies, but you can never feel like you get close to them. Perhaps part of this is because they feel like they come from another time. Oddly enough, although one of the main characters is a new-agey earth mother type and computers and the Internet play a role here and there, the story does not gain much in warmth or a contemporary feel from either element. Nature in this book al More...

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Jun 24, 2011

Meghan rated it:

The Biographer's Tale : Possession :: Foucault's Pendulum : The Name of the Rose More...

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Oct 10, 2011

Beth rated it:

First person narrative about a disaffected graduate student in English literature who switches to writing about an elusive, previously-published biographer who had (apparently) embarked on an intertwined biography of Linnaeus, Galton, and Ibsen. The nascent biography morphs into an autobiography which must be a comment about something-or-other but I’m too brain-weary to figure it out. Nice pictures, dense text, wry commentary about the academic life.

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Mar 12, 2011

Natalie rated it:

Wow, I read most of this book searching for a good point at which to abandon it altogether. Well written, by a talented author, but what a bore! Felt like someone gave her a list of unrelated subjects and challenged her to combine them all in one book:
bees and beetles
maelstrom
Peer Gynt
marbles

I did pick up a list of new vocabulary words, though, so I guess that's something... :)
(epicene, aleatory, periplum, viridian)

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Aug 29, 2009

Elizabeth rated it:

I usually love Byatt though there have been times that I found the beginning of her books rough going. This one I actually gave up on. I never do this. It's just far too much like the diary of a not very interesting English Lit grad student

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Aug 11, 2009

Marvin rated it:

Surprisingly, I gave up on this one. Surprisingly, because I really liked her earlier book, Possession. But the elements that made that one intellectually rewarding somehow made this one seem pretentious.

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Mar 16, 2009

Meg rated it:

An interesting book, although ultimately disappointing. I never quite clicked with the narrator and the interweaving of random passages of text did not make for an easy reading experience. It sets up for more than it delivers.

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Jul 26, 2010

Nancy rated it:

I was nearly 150 pages into this book when I realized that I had already read it. What's wrong with this picture? For me, Byatt's POSSESSION is the pinnacle of contemporary literature. So, I tried Babel Tower and was repelled by it (but read it); tried Angels and Insects (and couldn't read it); and now, (apparently) re-read The Biographer's Tale. This shares many things with Possession---academic quest; faux historic textual material; a puzzle and a romance. But, unfortunately, this book contai More...

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Sep 07, 2009

Melissa rated it:

One of those books that I generally enjoyed while reading it, but never felt that urge to get back to it. Layers of biography--the narrator, the biographer, the biographer's subjects, with some quirky British characters thrown in. Honestly, I was expecting a bigger payoff at the end, after slogging through Byatt's use of "primary" sources.
None of her books have quite lived up to Possession.

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Apr 20, 2009

John rated it:

"Read" this on book-on-tape. Not sure I would have persevered if I was turning the pages myself, but I liked it. Kind of academic, self-consciously postmodern, probably not for everybody.

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Nov 29, 2009

jennifer added it

i am pretty sure i at least half read this (when i picked it up thinking i hadn't, the travel agent called "puck's girdle" rang depressingly familiar). not a good sign either way.

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Aug 28, 2011

Laurie added it

I didn't get very far in this one. I checked it out from the library because Possession wasn't available. The writing style is lovely but I never cared about the character or his situation.

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