Angels and Insects (1992)

I just couldn't finish it. In fact, I barely started it before I stopped. I was a teenager when I picked it up though, so it might just have been over my head. ( )

I'm not entirely sure whether I liked this book or not.

I certainly preferred the first of the two novellas (Morpho Eugenia) and learnt a lot about the habits of social insects whilst reading it. As others have commented, the inclusion of various passages written by the main characters is a bit distracting - it's the sort of device that makes a book interesting to analyse, but not so pleasurable to read.

The Conjugial Angel was also interesting - I liked the premise of the Tennyson story, but again, I found the inclusion of the extracts of poetry distracting and, for me, they detracted from my enjoyment of the novella.

In summary, enjoyable enough, but I suspect someone looking to analyse the books will get more out of them than someone looking for a good read. ( )

Hmmm. I'm really torn about this book. On the one hand, the writing was excellent. On the other, it was very bizarre. Lots of insect imagery and themes in the first story, Morpho Eugenia. I felt it was…too much, however. Although the writing itself was exquisite, I just think I don’t like A.S. Byatt’s style very well. She has a way of telling stories that I find to be very off-putting. She’ll start the story - getting the narrative ball rolling and making me like all of the characters - and then she’ll stop the story, interjecting a thousand different, unrelated poems and fairy tale fables. In Morpho Eugenia’s case, she stopped the story countless times to give the reader very dry, tehcnical narrations on ant behavior. While germane to the story, I felt like I was reading a textbook. Towards the end of the book, the main storyline drops almost completely, becoming a rather dull collection of made-up fables and ant behavior texts, without very much attention to the main characters. It made the end events seem like a surprise, since the character development had all but ground to a halt in the middle of story, leaving little time for the organic character development needed to make the ending believable.I attempted the second story, but couldn’t get into it at all. Something about Tennyson? Dead lovers? Usually, I’d be all over that, but again - Byatt’s attempts to interject a bunch of faintly related material into the narrative left me cold. Ultimate rating: C (2.5 stars) ( )

This book is composed of two novellas both set in the mid-ninteenth century and both involving people of the upper classes. Otherwise the two works have nothing in common so it is hard to see how "A Major Motion Picture" could be made of them. Someone at work said he had seen it quite a while ago and he recalled that the movie went back and forth between the two stories but from looking at the IMDb review it looks to me like the movie is only based on the first novella, Morpho Eugenia. This makes more sense because that story is almost cinematic in its descriptions.

Morpho Eugenia tells the story of William Adamson, an adventurer recently returned from the Amazon to England. He spent 10 years in the Amazon gathering samples of indigenous insects, particularly butterflies. Unfortunately his return ship sank and almost all of his specimens sank with it. This was a severe blow because he was counting on selling those specimens to give him enough money to return to the Amazon. When the wealthy collector, Lord Alabaster, invites William to his estate to show those specimens he did save, William leaps at the chance. Once there he falls in love with the Lord's eldest daughter, Eugenia. Eugenia was engaged to be married but her fiance died and she is quite depressed. Lord Alabaster invites William to catalogue his extensive collection of insects (and other items) and offers him a handsome salary. Because this is a good way to stay close to Eugenia and also to make some money, William accepts. Eventually he is emboldened to propose to Eugenia and she accepts. Eugenia and William have a double ceremony with Eugenia's younger sister. William and Eugenia continue to live at the manor house and William continues to catalogue the vast collection. Children are born in quick succession so that William's dream of returning to the Amazon remains just a dream. William passes on his fascination with insects to the youngest Alabaster children at the entreaty of their caregiver, Matty Crompton, and together they write a children's book. Eventually this book provides the means for William to return to the Amazon but not as he imagined.

The second book, The Conjugial Angel, was a struggle for me. It involves a group of people who are spiritualists, trying to communicate with their dear departed. There is much detail about the philosophy of Emanuel Swedenborg, the founder of the Church of the New Jerusalem. I had never heard of Swedenborg or his church before. When I first read the title of the novella I read it as The Conjugal Angel but conjugial refers to the divine marriage of the Lord and the church, not marriage between two persons. Swedenborg believed that heavenly angels were composed of a man and a woman who were true and only loves on earth. One of the people in the group is the sister of Alfred Tennyson, Emily, and she was engaged to a friend of Tennyson's, Arthur Hallam. Sadly Hallam died very young while away on a European trip and Emily eventually married a sea captain, Mr. Jesse. Tennyson went on to write a poem to Arthur that was one of his most famous works. There is much quoting of this work and other poems of Tennyson, Keats, Browning as well as passages from the Bible. I found these passages, and the discussions about the spirit world, very tedious. The ending was a surprise and the best part of the work. ( )

Two novellas. Morpho Eugenia was fascinating, dark, and disturbing in many ways - as was The Conjugal Angel. The former more enjoyable for me, though Angel drew me in by the end. These aren't prim and proper little stories - rather, earthy and sensual in their own way despite the literary and scientific themes and content. ( )