Possession in Reading with Style

Sep 30, 2011 Wendy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 1001-books, historical-fiction, booker-prize, all-time-favorites, poetry, 500-women, infp

I don't claim to be a poetry person, but the Victorian-styled poetry worked well here as a vehicle for theme, emotion, plot, everything really. I fell into this book and resurfaced days later, unsure of where I was or how much time had elapsed...

Actually, I have a few minor quibbles about some of the plot conveniences at the end (a certain windstorm comes to mind). But there was so much more here to love. I especially liked the mirroring of the two plots. Almost every character has a counterpart ...more

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Oct 15, 2023 GONZA rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: posseduto, g-d-l-jacqueline

I have been wanting to read this novel for years, and thankfully so because it starts off really very very slow. The story then takes off and it took me very little time to read the whole book, despite the fact that at first I was almost certain I was going to quit. The author writes beautifully, and to think then that all the poems and diaries are fictional, as are the dozens of letters that make it, in part, an epistolary novel, always leaves me dumbfounded. None of the characters are anything ...more

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Nov 07, 2010 Elizabeth (Alaska) rated it liked it

Shelves: 1001-books

This was really a 3+ stars, or even a 4- stars. There are two stories here, with the story of 20th Century literary scholars trying to uncover the story of two poets of the 19th Century. This was my first Byatt, and I will read her again - her prose is quite good, and the story was interesting. In this case, however, she chose to include some long Victorian poetry. OK, maybe it wasn't really Victorian poetry because the 19th Century poets were strictly of her imagination, and she had to write th ...more

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