Jenny Reviews: Possession

The Vitals
Possession by A.S. Byatt
Release Date: 1st October 1991
Page Count: 555
Genre: Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction
Target Audience: Adult
Series: No
Source and Format: Purchased; Paperback

Summary (From Goodreads)
Winner of England’s Booker Prize and the literary sensation of the year, Possession is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once an intellectual mystery and triumphant love story. It is the tale of a pair of young scholars researching the lives of two Victorian poets. As they uncover their letters, journals, and poems, and track their movements from London to Yorkshire—from spiritualist séances to the fairy-haunted far west of Brittany—what emerges is an extraordinary counterpoint of passions and ideas.

Notes on Possession
This book. I adore this book. I am also in awe of this author. Not only has she written a novel, she has written a novel about two Victorian poets and included poetry from said poets. Who both have distinctive writing styles. She is a literary genius, as far as I'm concerned. This is not a book that you sit down and read in two days. If you read it with the sole purpose of figuring out the mystery of the relationship between the two poets you will miss out on so much. Her witty observations about the world of academia, postmodern literary theory vs. reality, psychoanalysis and sexuality, and human nature are wonderful but in danger of being lost if the reader does not take the time to really read this book.

The heart of the plot is the search for a connection between Henry Randolph Ash and Cristabel Lamotte. Ash and Lamotte were two poets who wrote in Victorian England but have not had any reason to be linked together until Roland Mitchell stumbles on a draft of a letter from Ash to Lamotte in a book of Ash's. From there is it a race to stay one step ahead of everyone else as Mitchell and Dr. Maud Bailey try and piece together what the nature of the relationship between the poets was and if it influenced their respective works. The book flips back and forth from the present day to Victorian England. We are introduced to Ash and Lamotte through their letters first, both to one another and others of their acquaintance. It is an interesting dynamic as the reader is able to hear first what the "modern" scholarship says of the authors and then gets to discover their hidden depths as Mitchell and Bailey put together the pieces of the puzzle scattered throughout England and Brittany.

This book is not for everyone. I fully recognize this. It is very much a work of literary fiction. Those who have not studied literary theory or are unfamiliar with Freud and psychoanalysis will not get some of the jokes and allusions, but it should not deter one from enjoying this novel. The story and storytelling are superb.

Memorable Quotes
“I cannot let you burn me up, nor can I resist you. No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.”

“I cannot bear not to know the end of a tale. I will read the most trivial things – once commenced – only out of a feverish greed to be able to swallow the ending – sweet or sour – and to be done with what I need never have embarked on. Are you in my case? Or are you a more discriminating reader? Do you lay aside the unprofitable?”

“How true it was that one needed to be seen by others to be sure of one's own existence.”

Overall Diagnosis