I eagerly awaited Byatt’s latest novel for some time, and received it at the library- first in line to check it out- like I would a 10 lb box of dark chocolates. Which some people might find an apt simile in more ways than one- it’s a huge book. But while some people have said it was *too* long, I found myself wishing it went on longer.

Set in the last years of the Victoria era through the Edwardian era, the epic story follows four families as they interact and grow. On the surface, most of them appear reasonably conventional. But these are people who are not following societies rules; we have free thinkers, we have women who want an education, a woman who is the main wage earner in the family, sex outside of marriage- lots of that-, homosexuality, people crossing class boundaries, Socialists, anarchists, laudanum addicts and child abusers. Of course, this is an era when the rules were changing. New technologies, new philosophies, were springing up all around. But while the world was, in many ways, changing for the better, these families were, in many ways, unraveling.

Byatt fills the book with intense detail about everything she touches on (the author is an avid researcher)- the meals, the clothing, the art, the politics. She creates an atmosphere that immerses the reader completely. Was there too much detail? I don’t think so- I only found myself starting to skim a couple of times, when the subject was politics- but I know other readers will disagree. I enjoyed my lushly described trip back in time. This lushness is part of the author’s technique- the first parts of the novel are described in this way; the last section, which deals with WW 2, is not. It is drawn with harsh, spare strokes that slash at the reader’s emotions. As innocence is lost, year by year, so is the lush beauty. Very well done, I say. ( )

I wanted desperately to like this massive, meandering novel more, since I was so intrigued by the period and the subject matter, but I kept thinking Byatt simply didn't make enough choices. She includes everything, and that is, in the end, unsatisfying. It's impressive, I grant that but, for this reader, ultimately exhausting. I like complicated novels, but this began to simply irritate me, which is a pity, because under all that bloat I frequently found the bones of a very good book. There were sections which delighted me, however, by the two-thirds mark I was weary of having to search for them. ( )

I am not a fan of big books. They are hard to read in bed and I hate constantly calculating: how many more pages to go? As with long movies, I always believe a judicious edit could do little harm to big books. The Children's Book is a massive tome - 615 pages.

I stuck with it because the subject matter and time period interests me enormously - artists/intellectuals/bourgeois moving from the Victorian to the Edwardian era. Family history is my secret vice and that aspect of the novel intrigued me too. I think that the novel would be well served in future editions by some attempt at a family tree or at least a list of characters to remind the reader of who's who.

A.S. Byatt had a kernel of an idea (like her heroine Olive Wellwood) which she fleshed out into a somewhat corpulent work. It's not a disinteresting idea. It's about what we choose to tell children and what we don't....and how they muddle through anyway, informed or misinformed about who they are and their place in the world. We tell them "fairy" tales that upon deeper analysis are often heavily coded horror stories. The truth is often hard to tell and also hard to write. A.S. Byatt, I have no doubt, has researched her characters and time period very well. And yes, sometimes there are sermons from the mount or little lectures about periods in this history which miss their mark I find.

But the characters were well formed and interesting and I did want to know what happened to each and every one of the children - only sometimes I got lost along the way and wished I wasn't lost and that my hand had been held tighter and there wasn't so much extraneous stuff.

PS. I reckon I found an error at the top of the page on page 65 of the Chatto and Windus version - "Basil and Olive, fairy kind and fairy queen, spoke the golden speeches of blessing on married men and women, on chidlren born and unborn." Doesn't she mean Humphrey? Or am I still very confused??? ( )

Writer as puppet master – she sets her characters in a frenzy of motion and drama and, if she does her job well, the strings she uses to manipulate her characters all but disappear. The reward? Readers become lost in her story and crave more of her characters long after the last page has been turned. Alas, those moments are not to be found in A.S. Byatt’s Booker-nominated The Children’s Book. However, the good news is that enrapturing readers with characters does not appear to be her intent. This is a novel of history and ideas, and homage to Charles Dickens and J.M. Barrie. On those terms, this novel succeeds.
(for the remainder of this review see http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/iss... ( )

This book had such promise. If you had never read her books - don't start with this one. The people in the book are befuddled and factual history takes away from Ms. Byatt's most excellent writing voice. It is a long book and I finished it out of respect for her other writings. This book was short listed for the Booker Prize - how? I don't know. ( )