Possession reminds us constantly that what we love must be allowed to retain its little secrets. It enacts this, most notably, in its epilogue, that last page that my teacher found so sad (and which does, in fact, grow sadder to me the older I get). But there’s also a flirtatious assertion of dominance that the narrator occasionally exercises the further we get into the book. The closer we get to narrative resolution, the more playfully convoluted it becomes. You may think you’re in control, the book says, but I’ll tell you what you want and what you can have, and when you can have it. It
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