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The Children's Book

by A.S. Byatt

3.61 of 5 stars 3.61 · rating details · 7,426 ratings · 1,528 reviews

From the Booker Prize-winning, bestselling author of Possession: a deeply affecting story of a singular family.

When children’s book author Olive Wellwood’s oldest son discovers a runaway named Philip sketching in the basement of a museum, she takes him into the storybook world of her family and friends. But the joyful bacchanals Olive hosts at her rambling country house—an...more

Paperback, 883 pages

Published August 10th 2010 by Vintage (first published 2009)

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Jan 17, 2010 Elizabeth rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010, books-about-books, in-by-of-england, reviewed, virginia-woolf-hogarth-bloomsbury, victorians-and-wannabes

Edited - January 17, 2010:

You know when you have a moment about a book -- weeks, months, or years after you've read it -- and it changes the whole thing for you? I had that this morning. I had had trouble determining what this book had reminded me of. Was it just that it covers familiar territory? I have read so many books written during or about this period in England, among these people (real and imagined), or by other authors going back to examine the incredible change that happened in societ...more

79 likes · like · see review

Nov 26, 2012 Kim rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook, historical-fiction, all-time-favourites

Three days after finishing the audiobook version of this novel, I’m still partly in the detailed and intricate world Byatt created. I didn’t want the book to end and I miss the characters.

A saga about the lives of its inter-related characters between 1895 and 1919, the novel concerns itself with the history of England and to a lesser extent Germany during that period. It deals with subjects including Fabian socialism, the Arts and Crafts movement, neo-paganism, the anarchist movement, education...more
Three days after finishing the audiobook version of this novel, I’m still partly in the detailed and intricate world Byatt created. I didn’t want the book to end and I miss the characters.

A saga about the lives of its inter-related characters between 1895 and 1919, the novel concerns itself with the history of England and to a lesser extent Germany during that period. It deals with subjects including Fabian socialism, the Arts and Crafts movement, neo-paganism, the anarchist movement, education, women’s suffrage, writing for children, puppetry and pottery. It’s also concerned with parent / child and sibling relationships, sexuality, truth, trust, deceit, betrayal and hypocrisy.

The work is hugely ambitious; a monster of book filled to bursting point with detail. Clothing, meals, parties, modes of transport and works of art are minutely described. Historical characters share the stage with fictional ones: an aging Oscar Wilde is seen at the Paris Exhibition in 1900, Rupert Brooke attends Fabian summer camp, the characters go to an early performance of JM Barrie’s Peter Pan, Marie Stopes is met when she is studying in Germany. Byatt painstakingly recreates the late Victorian and the Edwardian period as she explores the lives of a small segment of the population: artists, free-thinkers and intellectuals.

I might have enjoyed the work less if I had known more about the time period in which it’s set and the subjects with which it deals. As it is, I knew virtually nothing and learned a great deal. Listening to the novel felt like taking an immersion course in the social history of the period leading up to and including World War I. However, as interesting as I found the world of the novel, the wealth of detail is also its major weakness. At times it felt like Byatt had dumped the entire contents of her filing cabinet into the book; it was as if she couldn’t bear to leave out a single detail, no matter how insignificant to the narrative. This makes the work somewhat unwieldy and overblown. On the other hand, it also makes it closer to the style of a Victorian novel, which I assume is what Byatt was aiming to achieve.

The audiobook was beautifully narrated by Nicolette McKenzie, who found the perfect voice for each of the characters. This could not have been easy to do, given the large cast of characters and the fact that a significant number of them are much the same age. I was very glad that I listened to rather than read this book. The narration really brought the characters alive.

I’ve been undecided whether to give the book 4 or 5 stars. The fact that I didn’t want it to end would generally put a book into the “amazing” category. However, I’m also aware that it’s a flawed work, which could have been perfect with just a little more discipline. So I’ll settle on 4-1/2 stars for now. That may go up to 5 if I’m still thinking about the characters a week or two from now.

Edited on 1 December 2012: Well, a week on and I am still thinking about the characters and missing the world of the novel. I've amended the rating to 5 stars.
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Sep 10, 2012 Cecily rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: miscellaneous-fiction, historical-fiction-set-pre-20c

Both brilliant and deeply flawed, this book is an extraordinary achievement that doesn’t always work, but is nevertheless a riveting, educational and inspirational read. It was so beautiful and utterly engrossing, that I loved it despite its faults, and found it filling my thoughts for a week or two after I finished it.

It describes the creative process (principally writing, puppetry and pottery) in gloriously vivid detail, as it relates to some Edwardian families, but at other times reads more...more

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Jan 12, 2010 Sandy Tjan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: A.S. Byatt fans, Arts and Crafts enthusiasts

Shelves: 2010, long-ago-and-never-was

I looked forward to read this book. I was ready for a sweeping saga about the turbulent years between the closing of the Victorian age and the dawn of the Edwardian, with all its political, artistic and social ferment, and its culmination in the war to end all wars. Who can better chronicle these years than Byatt, with her deep knowledge of the period and her knack for creating affecting, memorable characters like Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte in Possession: A Romance?

Her cast of cha...more I looked forward to read this book. I was ready for a sweeping saga about the turbulent years between the closing of the Victorian age and the dawn of the Edwardian, with all its political, artistic and social ferment, and its culmination in the war to end all wars. Who can better chronicle these years than Byatt, with her deep knowledge of the period and her knack for creating affecting, memorable characters like Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte in Possession: A Romance?

Her cast of characters here is vast, representing nearly the full spectrum of English society at the end of the 19th century. There are, among others, Fabians, potters, suffragettes, Theosophists, working class runaways, a city banker, a museum director, a Russian anarchist and a German puppet master. There are literally dozens of characters that we have to keep track of, and it could be quite a challenge to remember who is who and what their political/ philosophical views are. It doesn’t help at all that each character necessarily gets a short shrift, due to having to share the stage with so many others. This constant shifting of focus means that virtually none of the characters’ stories could be sufficiently explored, and that the ending is robbed of a much-needed poignancy.

We can see how she had researched the era extensively, down to its minutiae, and imbibed the spirit of the age. And it is all there on the pages --- historical voice-overs that read as if they had been pasted over from lecture notes or school textbooks. But instead of serving as a rich, multi-layered background to the story, the massive amount of data often overwhelms it, drowning the personal dramas with an intrusive recitation of dates and facts.

By the middle of the book, as the years and historical/ personal events pile up, Byatt seems to lose control of the narrative, resulting in something that reads like random updates from half-remembered Facebook buddies:

Charles/Karl: still secretly an anarchist and but am going to study at the London School of Economics anyway.

Tom: still aimless.

Julian: still gay.

Wolfgang and Leon from Germany: are here for summer camp and some skinny dipping.

A.S. Byatt: the Boer War is still going on.

You get the idea.

She seems to be very determined to update us on what everyone is doing, in strict chronological order, resulting in some clunky passages that seem to have been lifted directly from her character notes, such as “It was Hedda who, between 1903 and 1907, became more and more obsessed with suffrage, with opposition, with action, with revolt. She followed eagerly, the campaign of the militants, as they broke glass and set bombs, were imprisoned, and later took to hunger-striking and suffered forcible feeding (1909)”. This is in contrast to wonderful descriptive passages elsewhere in the book. In fact, the quality of the writing is very uneven, ranging from the aforementioned clumsiness to polished pieces that we have come to expect from a writer of Byatt’s caliber. I’m convinced that there is a much slenderer, but much better novel or two inside this loose, baggy monster of a book. What it desperately needs is a disciplined editor who can prune the unwieldy narrative and provide a better focus on the characters and issues.
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Apr 06, 2013 Chrissie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audio, hf, philo-psychol, art, alt, great-britain

In conclusion, this is how books of historical fiction should be written. History is interwoven into the story and made fascinating. There is so very much history in this book, so if that makes you leery, choose another book. As stated below you follow a few families from 1895 through the First World War; the setting is primarily Victorian and Edwardian England and then the war years with excursions to Germany and Belgium and France. I adored the trip to Paris for the 1900 Exposition! Byatt, whe...more

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Nov 20, 2009 Felice rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"The Children's Book" is a thick, meaty, treasure trove of a novel. Every turn of a page involves the reader in ideas, plot, emotions, knowledge and sparkling writing. In blurb vernacular it's brilliant, a page turner, un-put-down-able, stunning, complex and my favorite--multi-layered.

The book takes place in England between 1895 and 1919. It criss-crosses Europe following the family fortunes of the Wellwoods, the Cains and the Fludds and a host of vibrant subsidiary characters. Olive Wellwood is...more "The Children's Book" is a thick, meaty, treasure trove of a novel. Every turn of a page involves the reader in ideas, plot, emotions, knowledge and sparkling writing. In blurb vernacular it's brilliant, a page turner, un-put-down-able, stunning, complex and my favorite--multi-layered.

The book takes place in England between 1895 and 1919. It criss-crosses Europe following the family fortunes of the Wellwoods, the Cains and the Fludds and a host of vibrant subsidiary characters. Olive Wellwood is the center of this world. She is a writer of fairy tales for children. Olive was a kid from the wrong side of the tracks who after a marriage above her station restyled her herself into a flowing, forward thinking, magazine layout ready Mother of 6 whose Bohemian glamour oozes out seduction and a nurturing spirit. She rules her world without maintaining any intimacy with it. Every moment is literary fodder for Olive. She plumbs the lives of her children for her fairy stories.

Olive and the other adults talk the talk of the Fabians, judge their intellectual superiority by their superficial associations with anarchists and performers and abuse their children in the name of art and free thinking all the while living in servant filled luxury or having the spinster sister schooling the children or waiting for the vicar and charity of others to clothe and feed their families. These Edwardian parents have left their familial responsibilities to others as they prattel on about the changing the world in a ceaseless effort to insure their self importance.

There are leagues of characters here whose lives are constantly intersecting and changing the landscape. As the children mature secret paternity's, horrors and how the world really works are reveled to them. They flee from the jails of their parents into the horror beyond measure of WWI. Although "The Children's Book" is a dark story overall, there is a feeling at the close of the novel when some of the surviving characters are mourning all that has been lost that here now is a substantial and committed group ready to try and remake their futures.

Throughout the book Byatt has wedged in as much historical information as the story will hold. There is an explanation of everything from the founding of the Victoria and Albert Museum to the preenings of the British and German monarchies to how to get a medical degree in 1904. This isn't the usual historical fiction nod to the price of nails in 1675 or a description of the style of dress in 1851 in order to quickly set time and place. The knowledge that Byatt spreads forth from beginning to end in this novel establishes the mindsets of the characters, the social background of their choices and the realities of the plot line. It is all completely integrated into the story and it is as much responsible for the success of the novel as the fictional attributes are.

"The Children's Book" is an outstanding novel of ideas and people. I honestly adored each and every page of it. This is a book that all aspiring writers should read so that they will know what they are aspiring to create. When I finished reading this book I was full.(less)

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Sep 04, 2009 Jen Padgett Bohle rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: it's an English teacher/Lit Professor's dream

I savored this novel every evening for the 2 months or so that I chipped away at its formidable length. A.S. Byatt has written a whopping, inimitable masterpiece of a heavy handed Victorian England succumbing to the blithe, jaunty Edwardian era which in turn gives way to the disillusionment and terror of trench warfare and World War I. Byatt, so unapologetically erudite, gives us a labyrinthine novel that is both devastating and whimsical. It's full of complexity and contradictions, stories with...more

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Michael No, I don't agree that those virtues are myths or fairy tales. Which is why I had to write to respond to that part of your review. The people in WWI h...more No, I don't agree that those virtues are myths or fairy tales. Which is why I had to write to respond to that part of your review. The people in WWI had no clue what they were getting into, true -- and that extends to the powers-that-be. No one knew what was coming. So does that not also mean that those leaders cannot really be accused of evil in calling upon some of people's highest values to help persuade them to fight, risk injury and death, and make the most extreme of sacrifices?

It seems to me that your comment denigrates these virtues (three of them are, at least; glory more an accidental consequence) because they proved so inadequate compared to the harrowing history, as it eventually played out. Still, I don't think those calling on those virtues in their populations were evil, devious, or malevolent; I think they were just people operating as we always do, without knowing what exactly lies ahead for us. But let's take the hypothetical case that the political leaders WERE cynically evoking these ideals..... I think that it is a mistake to dismiss the ideals because someone misused them.

We know that honor is a real ideal, not a fairy-tale one, because we see it most clearly when it is absent. For example, isn't Bernie Madoff a perfect example of a man without honor? Very differently, didn't the passengers of United flight 93 demonstrate the virtue of concern for country? What touching patriotism! Thank goodness most people DO feel it!

I agree that some plans do not turn out right.... what an understatement, eh? But I think sometimes we impute to those involved a cynicism that is not warranted, and that cynicism -- it is really our OWN cynicism -- fails to give history, and the people who lived that history, the full truth of their lives. And that same cynicism inclines us to error, too. It is (at least arguably) not the real truth of the event. And making it a yardstick for our own judgments only compounds that error, I believe. We then imagine we see it operating similarly in other situations; it can become like a set of blinders that prevents us from seeing a situation fully. Like using a bumper-sticker philosophy to make a serious judgment.(less)
updated Sep 18, 2010 06:49am

Jen Padgett Bohle Yeah, that was a rhetorical question. I got your point :)
My point was not to denigrate anything; in fact I kind of tried to dodge the question because...more Yeah, that was a rhetorical question. I got your point :)
My point was not to denigrate anything; in fact I kind of tried to dodge the question because I find that,too many times, engaging in discourse about patriotism and the values which accompany it is something akin to discussing religion --- these things usually lead nowhere except to flared tempers. (and one person questioning the other party’s patriotism and accusations of ill will toward men and women in uniform etc)
Anyway, do I think honor, country, and duty exist? Yes, but…
(Almost nothing is black and white to me). It’s simplistic and naïve to believe that these things exist as pure, isolated virtues in most people and that they are uninfluenced by a myriad of other factors. One never knows what someone’s true motivation is, and in fact, most people are a muddle of conflicting values and are constantly shifting sides of the integrity spectrum. Assuming that all men and women who fought/fight in wars act(ed) out of positive incentives and self-sacrificing altruism is just as much a failure “to give them the full truth of their lives,“ as you so eloquently stated. In my own life I’ve experienced this tendency to simplify things and make them unequivocally moral --- my father insists on sentimentalizing my university years (for various reasons) and making me into a saint for all the hardships I endured. That denigrates my true experience which was a mixture of hardship but also of excess and a little debauchery. The point is, the entire story needs to be told. Honor and duty and country can also go along with paychecks, the GI bill, insurance, and other factors that may influence one’s decision to make sacrifices for one's country (or family, or whatever).

In The Children's Book, note the way Karl/Charles is treated for NOT going off to war. He’s ostracized by society, his manhood is questioned, and he’s a bit of an embarrassment to his family, so much so that he questions his pacifism and moral position. He would be going off to war with negative motivations/incentives --- to avoid the unpleasant consequences of staying home. I daresay this negative motivation plays into human decisions and actions quite often. Frankly, men and women who are unquestioningly and unflinchingly patriotic are disturbing. We should question, reflect, and think about everything, including what our duty to country and fellow people should be, the nature of honor, and why/if we should feel obligated to our country. Blind patriotism leads to dangerous consequences.

Again, I think that honor exists, but there are always other factors involved that we simply can’t overlook. Is a person who donates time and money to the less fortunate any less honorable because she does those things to increase her own social status or to feel better about herself? How are we defining honor? Pure selflessness, pure honor, is absolutely a rare thing, which is why, on the opposite end from Madoff, people like Mother Teresa end up making the news as exceptions to the norm.(less)
Sep 18, 2010 12:54pm

Jun 15, 2009 Laura rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009-mt-bookpile

Before I go any further, I should say that I love Byatt's work; when I read about this book, I sent to Canada to get a copy as the US edition hadn't yet been released.

This is a Family Saga, only covering many intertwined families and friends rather than many generations. The detail of British history (the Victorian Era, Fabianism, pottery, children's books, etc.) is Byatt's exacting best, giving the reader places to pause as the plot moves forward. The characters are all complex; some you start...more

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Jul 07, 2010 Joanne rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I had attempted 'Possession' years ago and found I just couldn't get past the first chapter so I didn't think I would enjoy Byatt's latest. However, this was a very ambitious novel, spanning the life of a family from 1895 to 1919 and I found myself admiring the sheer scope and intellectual capacity of the novel and novelist. Not only does Byatt look at the impact of children's literature and the impact that being an children's author has on Olive Wellwood's family, there are also many literary,...more

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Sep 26, 2012 Kate Musselman rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: re-reading

Another astounding novel from A.S. Byatt. Complex, beautifully written, and, as always, ferociously intelligent. I love a novel that pulls you entirely into its world, and this is one of those. Byatt is a formidable intellect, and her work is not for the faint of heart; you must be willing to think, to do a certain amount of intellectual work when reading her, but it's always worth it. In the end you have not just another wonderful *story* but you've learned so much. One of the most fascinating...more

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Nov 18, 2012 Cheryl rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction, the-readers-review-book-club

A.S. Byatt's encyclopedia of knowledge bulges this tale of an early twentieth century children's writer and a mad painter into a corner and pontificates on every aesthetic aspect of the era. Eventually the core of the book is muted by the extremities and lost in the verbage.

Byatt's intellect is astounding with a vocabulary that expands the mind with its scope. In interviews she says she goes to bed with Shakespeare and believes metaphysically only in Wallace Stevens. When so much of the world's...more

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Jan 11, 2013 Laura rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Anybody with an interest in European history at the turn of the 19th Century would find something worth reading here, but if your definition of a good book is a quick read, this is a catastrophe. There are countless themes running throughout, my favourite - and my reason for reading the book - being the fairy tale theme (incorporated using the character of a female fairy tale writer, Olive Wellwood, and the stories she writes for her children). But for me too much of Byatt's prose reads like a g...more

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Oct 20, 2010 Chrisf rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm giving it a "really liked it" with caveat. I enjoy reading history, especially when sugared with some human interest. So, this, I hope, has given me some facts and feelings about post-Victorian, Edwardian England, leading up to/and, sort of, including the first world war.
As a novel, it would get a lower rating.
I was very interested when first read the reviews, as it was about the likes of E. Nesbit, and her crowd of socialists, anarchists, suffragettes. I have always loved that woman!
This...more I'm giving it a "really liked it" with caveat. I enjoy reading history, especially when sugared with some human interest. So, this, I hope, has given me some facts and feelings about post-Victorian, Edwardian England, leading up to/and, sort of, including the first world war.
As a novel, it would get a lower rating.
I was very interested when first read the reviews, as it was about the likes of E. Nesbit, and her crowd of socialists, anarchists, suffragettes. I have always loved that woman!
This quote from Edith Nesbit (found here in GoodReads) rather sums up what the author is trying to explore? : "When you are young, so many things are difficult to believe, and yet the dullest people will tell you that they are true - such things, for instance, as that the earth goes round the sun, and that it is not flat but round. But the things that seem really likely, like fairy-tales and magic, are, so say the grown-ups, not true at all. Yet they are so easy to believe, especially when you see them happening. And the most wonderful things happen to all sorts of people, only you never hear about them because the people think that no one will believe their stories, and so they don't tell them to any one except me."
Well, I was interested in Byatt's reportage about the fascination of the intelligensia with nostalgia, fairy tales, arts, while at the same time forming political parties to meet the growing desire for equal rights. Yet, I concur with another reviewer, that Byatt seems to have just jotted down facts to replace description... connecting with "and then, and then, and then..." (This is my first A.S. Byatt experience... are they all this inert?) Plus, she repeated facts here and there, not as a writer's tool, but possibly just to further fill the pages... or poor editing.
However, I did enjoy reading about the times, the sweeping changes brought to Europe by industrialization and the subsequent effect on classes and genders. Now, I think "the classes" are "First World"/"Third World"-- the changes are computer/internet driven but the build up to conflict, as countries vie to be the Empire of Capitalism and as people struggle for rights, both economic and human ... I expect it will end in another world war for similar reasons... the rulers or governing powers would rather deal with that than to face the desire for change head-on. Hmmm, I should just blame them, society/culture/people don't do very well with change either. Myself included.
So, I must admit: thought provoking.
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Dec 09, 2010 Emily O rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Emily by: I loved Possession

Shelves: women-authors, historical-fiction, group-read, british-lit, contemporary-lit

The first thing I have to tell you is that this is not an easy review to write. How does one review an 675 page book in just a few paragraphs? But then how does an author manage to fit the whole world into just 675 pages? I honestly don't know, but if A.S. Byatt can do the latter, I can definitely attempt the former, though I fear I may ramble a bit.

This is usually the part of the review where I'd tell you what The Children's Book is about. the summary GoodReads gives you up at the top of the pa...more The first thing I have to tell you is that this is not an easy review to write. How does one review an 675 page book in just a few paragraphs? But then how does an author manage to fit the whole world into just 675 pages? I honestly don't know, but if A.S. Byatt can do the latter, I can definitely attempt the former, though I fear I may ramble a bit.

This is usually the part of the review where I'd tell you what The Children's Book is about. the summary GoodReads gives you up at the top of the page is interesting, but it doesn't really tell you what the book is about. This book is not one of those books where there is a terrible secret that, when found out, changes everyone's lives forever. No, this book is much more complex, much more real, than that.

What is this book about?
- It is about a family. It is about what family means, what motherhood means, what brother and sister and husband and wife mean, and what those relationships require from you.
- It is about politics, from banking systems to anarchy to socialism, and how they affect the lives of the rich and the poor.
- It is about art, about literature and pottery and painting and music and drama and all the different intersections of these things. It is about artistic movements, about aesthetic principles, about what it means to truly have talent.
- It is about love, and all the different ways it is found and kept, the ways that it is honored or forgotten or missed along the way.
- It is about scholarship, and what it means to be educated. It is about the fight between living in academia and living in the real world. It is about the desire to think real thoughts, and the consequences of that desire.
- It is about the lives of women, and the choices that were often made between having a career and having a family. It is about what makes someone 'marriageable' and what makes them happy, and how those things often disagree. It is about the fight for suffrage and the multitude of different ways that women can find happiness.
- It is about sex and sexual desire, it's many different forms and functions, love and loyalty, fun and exploration, mistakes and betrayal.
- It is about war, and all of the stupid pointless waste that goes along with it. It is about the lack of glory found in fighting, about the mud and the gore and the pain of dying alone.
- It is about perseverance, and about carrying on after pain and loss. It is about love in all its real and honest power. It is about steadiness, about sacrifice, about pain, and above all about the hope that comes afterward.
- Most of all, this book is about life, in all its forms, with all its twists and turns, from the moment of birth until your final breath.

The Children's Book is, in short, about everything. When I started this book, I was amazed at the sheer number of characters. I even made a chart to keep track of them. I drew family trees with lines connecting friends and lovers. By the time I got to the end, my tree was all but forgotten. I was taken wholly into the world that Byatt described. I knew these people, had known them for decades. I didn't want to give this book back to the library, for fear of losing them. When I finished this book, I considered turning right back to the beginning and reading it all over again. I know that, no matter how many times I read it, I will never have taken in everything this book has to offer. That is, to me, the sign of a great book.

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Dec 30, 2010 Marjorie Hakala rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I've often heard people say that children have more intense feelings than adults. That may or may not be based on any particular psychological insight; it's true there was a time when I would get insanely excited about, say, putting the sprinkles on an ice cream sundae, an experience that would barely get my attention these days (actually I can't remember the last time I bothered with sprinkles, since I figured out they don't really taste like anything).

But when it comes to art, at least, there...more I've often heard people say that children have more intense feelings than adults. That may or may not be based on any particular psychological insight; it's true there was a time when I would get insanely excited about, say, putting the sprinkles on an ice cream sundae, an experience that would barely get my attention these days (actually I can't remember the last time I bothered with sprinkles, since I figured out they don't really taste like anything).

But when it comes to art, at least, there is some adult stuff in the world that is so complex and rich and gorgeous or hideous that I can't help but come under its power, as ineluctably as if I were a child being offered ice cream, and the effect is far more powerful than just about anything I was capable of experiencing as a kid.

I'm thinking about this because A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book is (as you might guess) deeply interested in the subject of childhood, but it's also a majestically grown-up novel, and it exerted a powerful influence on me. That's partly because fairy tales, the Victorian period, and World War I are easy buttons to push to get me to have strong feelings about a story, but a great deal of credit is due to Byatt's incredibly fine control over her language. Some of the simplest sentences in this book made me sigh and curl around the book a little tighter, not for being unusual or pivotal or innovative, just for being perfect:

"Olive believed she was a wonderful party-giver, and this belief was infectious, though not entirely well founded."

"Tom had a feeling he immediately remembered, though he had never learned to expect it. Olive in the flesh, Olive perfumed with attar of roses, was not the secret sharer of the otherworld, to whom he wrote letters. That was a kind of second self, who wrote him and inhabited his dreams. This was a lively, sociable woman in creamy broderie anglaise."

So I sighed a lot, but speaking objectively, is it a good book? I can tell you that it is stunningly beautiful. Byatt is without question one of the greatest living artists of the English language, and, better yet, much of this novel is about beautiful things and the experience of beauty. I can tell you that it broke my heart in at least three different ways (suddenly and shockingly, quietly and poetically, and, when it came to the First World War, brutally and inevitably). It is a masterful, epic portrayal of an era and how it ultimately undid itself in the most violent way imaginable.

This last aspect--the novel as portrait of a time--is also the novel's weakest point. Byatt's research shows in whole chapters about historical events, and the narrative voice shifts there into something very closely resembling a lecture (or Bill Bryson's At Home, an unfocused nonfiction work which I was halfway through when I picked up this book). I would have liked to see this aspect of the novel more integrated, and I was enough aware of the problem while reading that I did decide to bump the book down to four stars. (That, and there's a character who's consistently referred to as Charles/Karl through most of the book, and I found this obnoxious.) The Children's Book was shortlisted for the Booker when Wolf Hall won. The ambition of the two books is on a similar scope, but I can see why Wolf Hall, the more consistent and focused of the two, carried the day.

But that doesn't mean I didn't love this novel. I loved it madly, and it left me haunted and unable to read anything else for the next few days. It is the rare book, for children or for adults, that achieves that effect.(less)

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May 07, 2011 Antonia rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011

overwhelmed, really. hard to put into words what i would want to say about it. it did not give me a lot of pleasure, except the one of reading a very well thought out and executed novel. with the missing pleasure i merely mean that it is not there to be uplifting or solely to entertain you. there does not seem to be a big agenda or lifted index finger either. it exists in its own right, unapologetically. not trying to catch the reader by fluffiness or deliberate "grimness" as e.g. crime novels d...more

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Feb 16, 2010 Isabelle rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am an A.S. Byatt fan, have been for a very long time... As usual, the book is full of knowledge on a period of English History I love, the late Victorian/Edwardian transition. There is so much history, art, music, literature, politics underlying the story of a pretty wide group of people, related by blood, love, common interests and the pursuit of fulfillment.
The novel has been described as sweeping, and maybe just this once, Byatt has written an overly sweeping book that spins so much time th...more

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Oct 14, 2009 Margaret rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: arc, historical-fiction, authors-ab

I adore Possession, but since I have never found another Byatt I've loved nearly so much, I was a little anxious upon beginning The Children's Book. Happily, I was enthralled right from the start.

The Children's Book is a sprawling, absorbing family epic, stretching from the late Victorian era through the Edwardian and ending just after World War I. Olive Wellwood is a children's book author who lives with her husband Augustus and their seven children at their beautiful country home, the center o...more

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Sep 04, 2009 Chris rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-fairy-tales, byatt, lit-english, historical-fiction-1700-1900, literature-fairy-tale-retold-influ

I was lucky enough to be in Toronto and so was able to pick this up before its U.S. release (apparently we don't deserve it until the fall).

I thought it would be a second Possession, but it's not, which is good. In some ways, Byatt's style in this book seems closer to the style of her sister, Drabble, a hands off approach which makes it a little harder (or takes longer) to come to terms or grips with characters. There are even some characters we never come to grips with (interesting considering...more

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Apr 20, 2010 Susan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Some background:
I've been a Byatt fan since I started reading her about 1990--I heard about Possession when it won the Booker I think and am always fascinated by novels that attempt to reconstruct the past from documents and bits and pieces picked up in research. But even in Britain it was still only in hardcover so I bought a few paperbacks of earlier novels on a trip to London: The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life and The Game. Read them in quick succession and was hooked.
Last spring I was i...more Some background:
I've been a Byatt fan since I started reading her about 1990--I heard about Possession when it won the Booker I think and am always fascinated by novels that attempt to reconstruct the past from documents and bits and pieces picked up in research. But even in Britain it was still only in hardcover so I bought a few paperbacks of earlier novels on a trip to London: The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life and The Game. Read them in quick succession and was hooked.
Last spring I was in London and one of the first things I read in the newspaper was about the publication of a new Byatt novel. Off to the Waterstone's near the University of London for a copy. Later found a signed copy in Hatchard's on Picadilly and bought that too. I'm not an autograph collector, but for me Byatt is special.
My review:
I admire Byatt's ability to pick a period (in this case the end of the Victorian period and the run up to WWI), to pick a theme or collection of related themes (in this case liberal social thinking--Fabians, feminists, advocates of free love, a whole range of social reformers) who sought to extend the Victorian theme of a world getting better and better to human interactions and worked for personal freedoms and personal development) and to pick a place (in this case Kent--earlier Byatt books have focused on York where she grew up or London) and then to concoct characters and story lines that completely subsume all the ideas and the research that in so many novels these days stick out like sore appendages, into her story.
Her title rings many bells. First, the main character, Olive Wellwood, writes children's stories. A case can be made that children's stories (a la Peter Pan and Kim and The Railway Children) was Britain's main contribution to literature in this period. Olive also writes an individual story book for each of her seven children, adding to the stories often as she has her tea in bed everyone morning. For her it becomes a kind of mothering, one that works differently (and not all successfully with each child.) It's an age in which childhood comes to be seen as a separate, formative, stage of life that merits adult attention--and initially at least, Olive and her husband Humphrey in their big house in the woods, Todfright, with her sister Violet as organizer and child minder, seem to have created an ideal childhood for Tom, Dorothy, Phyllis, Hedda, Florian, Robin and Harry.
The novel abounds with children: in addition to the Wellwood children there are Julian and Florence, the children of Prosper Cain, an administrator at the V&A in London who's an advisor to Olive when she needs historical background for her stories; Charles and Griselda, the children of Humphrey's banker brother Basil and his rich German wife Katharina; Geraint, Imogen and Pomona, the children of neighbor and genius potter, Benedict Fludd and his wife Seraphita (really Sarah-Jane) who'd been a model for pre-Raphaelites painters; Philip Warren, a dirty runaway whom Tom Wellwood and Julian Cain find breaking into the museum to sketch beautiful things, and whom Olive, herself an escapee from the North where her father was a coal miner, takes home to "do something for". Eventually we have Philip's sister Elsie too who makes her way from the potteries where their mother died from lead poisoning as she worked painting dishes. Philip begins to work with Fludd (who needs an apprentice and organizer and who recognizes Phillip's talent) and Elsie becomes housekeeper at Dungeness where Seraphita is disorganized and mentally absent most of the time, managing only to clothe her daughters in loose flowing but dirty and badly made dresses, while totally neglecting her less artistic but more practical son.
The Humphrey Wellwoods host a Midsummer party every year to which all these children and their parents come as do as all the artists and do-gooders and liberal thinkers for miles around--and this was a back-to-the-land movement so many many had moved, like the Wellwoods, to the countryside in Kent. It's a costume party with some acting of Shakespeare's play. Idyllic, at least on the surface.
A subplot of the novel involves a family of German puppeteers from Munich--and their children--who, with Katharina Wellwood, give some insight into artists and liberal thinkers in Germany.
The basic canvas of the book is this Midsummer party of 1895 with its huge cast of characters, many of whom are children supposedly being raised in freedom and love with encouragement to discover their passions in life. In reality, the canvas is more complex and far darker than it appears and these children will become part of the great children's crusade which was World War I, lurking in the background to snap up their youth and their innocence and ending the Victorian certainty of a world ever improving.

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Oct 11, 2009 Emily rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

In my reading of this I alternated between deep admiration of Byatt and deep irritation with her. She has put all the force of her prodigious talent into burying the threads of two or three really interesting novels of reasonable length in this over-sized book. In a way, it is like a vast tapestry of the cultural movements in England, and to some extent Germany, from 1895 to 1919 (with fascinating personal stories that can be perceived if you peer up close), but really it's more of a vast tangle...more

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Jan 27, 2010 Jane rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A pleasure. This is an engrossing family saga set in England that manages to weave numerous threads of culture, history, and politics from the era of the 1890's to the first World War. Incrediby well-researched, masterful plotting (whatever the verb is for that). Some might argue that it's not as well written as Possessed and I'd agree with those who would argue that the poetry in the latter is more accomplished. Byatt had set a lofty standard for herself. The Children's Book is more accessible,...more

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Sep 04, 2009 Anna rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I stayed up all night last night to finish this one. I was so engrossed I didn't realize the book was ending until I turned the last page and found myself faced with acknowledgments instead of another chapter. Although there are some now typical Byatt conventions in The Children's Book, such as a the central use of theatrical production to bring disparate groups together and in fact the disparate group of improbably connected characters itself, the novel is wonderful. I didn't want it to end, an...more

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Sep 05, 2012 Laura Miller rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Based on the life of E. Nesbit, a pioneering author of children's fantasy and adventure stories in the late 1800s and early 1900s, this is one of those Byatt novels that's alternately perfectly gorgeous and drily encyclopedic. I find the period, which was full of idealistic utopians obsessed with the Middle Ages, to be especially fascinating, so I don't mind the occasional info-dump. Less indulgent readers should brace for them. On the other hand, there are few writers who can convey the kind of...more

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Feb 24, 2013 Kristen rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013, 2012

I did like the Children's Book quite a bit. Parts of it really caught fire for me, but on the whole I felt like Byatt indulged in too much "lecturing" on the social and artistic trends of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. She's really at her best when she's focusing on plot and characters, but there just wasn't enough of that here. That said the historical stuff could be quite interesting. I'd recommend reading this with an iPad in hand so you can Google paintings, sculptures, pottery and clothi...more

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Feb 20, 2010 Aeron rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Hooked from the beginning: Nineteenth century England, a Midsummer's party in the country with handmade lanterns and fanciful costumes; richly described, elaborate puppet shows; a run-away boy thrust in the middle of the madness with nothing but his dreams of being a potter.

This book was pure delight for me, exploring playful and sometimes painful observations of the creative process. A.S. Byatt is amazing.

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Aug 07, 2011 Maria added it · review of another edition

This was the first time I have read Byatt & perhaps it wasn't quite the right one to start with. I started off enjoying the story and her very lyrical, layered, unusual writing style, but in the end I found the endless historic, literary, artistic, political etc. references to be a bit much, detracting from the main stories. There was a lack of character development & so many characters that I identified with none, although I really did want to and found myself wanting to know more about...more

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Jun 10, 2013 Tamsin Burford rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I had to give up on this I'm afraid. I read it for over a third when I came to the realisation that I felt nothing for the characters and was sadly, a bit bored.

A large cast - brilliant and well scoped but I kept hoping they would develop, so that I cared. But for me, that did not happen.

The landscapes were well described - scenery both inner and outer brought to life but that alone did not hold the novel for me.

There were too many coincidences that I found laboured.

There was too much of the aut...more

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Mar 08, 2013 Rhonda rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

At 675 pages, I've been plugging away at this since we went back to school in January. A fan of neither historical fiction nor the family saga, this one sucked me in. I had days when I couldn't read more than 3 pages, yet I did. The prose was striking, carefully crafted, absolutely lovely, even if the content wasn't (incest, for instance or the childhood of a coal miner's daughter). My heart ached for the characters (really, you crazy socialist Fabians, you're going to send your son off to a pub...more

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Jan 06, 2013 Atlanta rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt, an adult novel with 615 pages. I have to say that this must be one of the best books I've ever read, probably by second favorite of all time. It's a very complex book, with hundreds of characters, and is the story of several families living in south-east England between 1895 and 1919. It is the story of the children of these families, who grew up in a golden time full of art and companionship, who were then faced with the horrors of war in 1914. It inclu...more

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About A.S. Byatt

A.S. Byatt (Antonia Susan Byatt) is internationally known for her novels and short stories. Her novels include the Booker Prize-winning Possession, The Biographer’s Tale and the quartet, The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, Babel Tower and A Whistling Woman, and her highly acclaimed collections of short stories include Sugar and Other Stories, The Matisse Stories, The Djinn in the Nightingale’s E...more

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Quotes from The Children's Book

“She didn't like to be talked about. Equally, she didn't like not to be talked about, when the high-minded chatter rushed on as though she was not there. There was no pleasing her, in fact. She had the grace, even at eleven, to know there was no pleasing her. She thought a lot, analytically, about other people's feelings, and had only just begun to realize that this was not usual, and not reciprocated.” — 17 people liked it

“Dorothy was in that state human beings passed through at the beginning of a love affair, in which they desire to say anything and everything to the beloved, to the alter ego, before they have learned what the real Other can and can't understand, can and can't accept.” — 16 people liked it

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