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Loading... The Children's Book (edition 2010)by A.S. Byatt
Work detailsThe Children's Book by A.S. Byatt
The Children's Book is a story about the Wellwood's, a dysfunctional English family. Olive Wellwood is a famous children's author and the matriarch of this family. The novel follows her life and the life of her children as they grow from childhood to adulthood. The stories of the family members was fascinating, but I also enjoyed seeing the change in English society as it moved it's way through the beginning of the Century. Many critics have felt that this book included too much research and details, but although the story was long, it kept my attention. The audiobook is very well narrated by Rosalyn Landor. (  ) jmoncton | Jun 3, 2013 |  About a hundred pages in I put this book on a long break: beekeeping and bookclub books were more important, and A.S. Byatt is for savoring not sipping, and it is big rather than easily transportable. Over the past week I reapplied myself, and I do love her writing style. Lots of green and gold and glassy description; lots of pottery and puppetry; fairies and folks; her usual recreation of period prose and verse; late Victorian and Edwardian English history, literature, politics, social issues, and anything else that caught her limitless scholarly gaze, Byatt worked into her novel. And mostly, I loved it. I thought, when I started it -- because I read without consulting reviews or blurbs -- that, beginning in 1894, it would end before 1914. None of her other novels, however long, cover a 20-year period (give or take an epilogue). I know that Edwardian England was not like one long perfect summer day with Aloysius always in a good temper (if I may mix my prewar metaphors). But when I realized, given the pages under my right hand, that I was going to have to see all these characters past August 1914, I was dismayed. I had read these young men from childhood into adulthood and I did not want to watch them onto the Somme or Ypres. It's not just that this stupid cold made me more sentimental than usual. It's that I don't think she followed through with all the themes she began, and did not fully synthesize the bucolic dreaming of Summer Street with the unspeakable nightmares of Bitter Trench. But mostly I loved it. ljhliesl | May 21, 2013 | It's a wonderful story which is set out from 1895 up to 1919. It's spelling style is very rich and marvelous. All the characters are linked to each other if it's in a familiar way, through friendship, political connections or art. The characters belong to the Fabian Society, the free thinker, women's movement or the naturalist. Even though everybody is trying to be open minded it doesn't work out always in a good way. One of the main character is writing fairy tales for each of her children and therefore must be the title of this book. Although this story is a fiction the most elements from that time about society, women's movement and free thinker are true. (  ) Ameise1 | Apr 25, 2013 | AS Byatt is, undoubtedly, a remarkable writer. The depth and breadth of her storytelling never fails to knock my socks off and "The Children's Book" was no different. Truth be told, though, I skimmed the last 200 pages of this book because I just didn't want to read it anymore. She chose to cover about 30 years in excruciating detail and interspersed the personal stories of her characters with a kind of general history of everything from fairy tales to anarchism to clay pottery. And it wasn't bad. It was even kind of masterful. But I wanted to move on, and, with 400 pages read and 200 more to go, I simply lost the dedication required to read every word remaining. So. Do with that what you will. :) (  ) KristySP | Apr 21, 2013 | In conclusion, this is how books of historical fiction should be written. History is interwoven into the story and made fascinating. There is so very much history in this book, so if that makes you leery, choose another book. As stated below you follow a few families from 1895 through the First World War; the setting is primarily Victorian and Edwardian England and then the war years with excursions to Germany and Belgium and France. I adored the trip to Paris for the 1900 Exposition! Byatt, when she describes a place, a person, or an event you feel the ambiance of that event. You are there. You see the person. I will give only one example. At a wedding, the bride's visage "looked like the white wax of a candle, lit by a golden flame." Each character's behavior and appearance, the clothes they wear and the things they say feel genuine. You nod and think, yes, that is exactly what she would do, say, wear. I was enchanted by the clothes, the artistry, the sensuality expressed. Rosalyn Landor's narration of the audiobook further enhanced these characters. This is the best narration I have ever listened to. She captures perfectly the different classes of the English. She speaks French and German equally well. The book covers everything from literature, the classics and fairy tales, to Fabian socialism to the Arts and Craft Movement to puppetry to women's rights and of course politics. Sex too. All is covered with depth.....although sometimes there is simply too much to absorb! Some sections were too long and drawn out, and thus the book feels a little less than amazing. It is very, very good, even if you must hard-nose it through some chapters! Don't give up at the half-way point, when the story lags or when you get caught in a fairy tale. Let me repeat one more time, her characters, and there are many, breathe. This is important because you don't pick up this book to just learn; you pick it up for the story and to escape into the world Byatt has created for us. ********************** I have listened to 3/4 of this immensely long book.......and guess what? I really like it again! Why? The characters are marvelously drawn. They are real people. How has the author managed to draw over twenty people with such precision? It is not that one is brave and only does brave things; that would make the character flat, two dimensional. Do you know any two people who are the same? Of course not! Each of these marvelous characters feels real, each in their own special way. Each fumbles in a way that they would fumble in the real world. That is the best way I have of explaining these people - the parents, the children, the friends, tutors, artists and acquaintances. Perhaps Rosalyn Landor's narration helps to individualize each character. In dialogs, the dreamy girl, the educated scholar, the creative authoress, the working class servant, each and every one of them, respond in a tone that fits who they are. The author and the narrator are working together to create a splendid performance. Think if I had given up on the book! What a shame that would have been. *************************** I have listened to about half..... parts are very boring! Gaeta, who recommended the book to me, also described it as a "lumpy mattress". I agree. Parts are interesting, other parts are tedious and boring. When it is boring, as it is now, even Rosalyn Landor's excellent narration does not suffice. ************** ETA: a link explaining what Fabian socialism is: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Pfabian.htm and a link about the Arts and Craft Movement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_and_Crafts_movement If you read the book you will understand more thoroughly! **************** I realize now that it is not the Victorian style of writing, detailed and packed with information, that I object to; I like all the information packed into each sentence of this book! I have nothing against the writing style, if it is interesting as it IS in this book. My problem has been stuffy Victorian characters, ie those who care about saying the right words, wearing the right clothes and behaving and doing the "oh so proper" thing. It is these typical staid, proper Victorian people that irritate me, not the writing style! A.S. Byatt has so much to teach me! The characters in this book are NOT staid or proper or stuffy in the least!!!! I love these people. I have only read three chapters though. This book is jam packed full of information about Fabian socialism, which I knew nothing about, and about pottery and the English Arts and Craft Movement at the end of the 1800s, about the history of Midsummer festivals and theater and politics and children's literature and artists and the conditions of the poor working classes. The book follows the Fabian socialist Wellwood family from 1895 through the years of the First World War. The mother, Olive Wellwood, is loosely based on the children's author Edith Nesbit. I am thoroughly enjoying this! Of course there are characters representing the staid Victorians too, Basil Wellwood is one; they add contrast! Tons of kids, each with different personalities. The narration by Rosalyn Landor IS exceptional. The book is long and I have just begun. :0) Completed April 9, 2013 ( )2  chrissie3 | Apr 13, 2013 |
 The novel has a tendency to sprawl, with too many characters and too much to say. Yet Byatt takes tender care with the reader. She is a careful guide, and though this entry is at times a lot to process, it’s a worthwhile journey.  While Byatt’s engagement with the period’s overlapping circles of artists and reformers is serious and deep, so much is stuffed into “The Children’s Book” that it can be hard to see the magic forest for all the historical lumber — let alone the light at the end of the narrative tunnel. The action is sometimes cut off at awkward moments by ponderous newsreel-style voice-over or potted lectures in cultural history. Startling revelations are dropped in almost nonchalantly and not picked up again until dozens or even hundreds of pages later. Byatt’s coda on the Great War, dispatched in scarcely more pages than the Exposition Universelle, is devastating in its restraint. But too often readers may feel as if they’re marooned in the back galleries of a museum with a frighteningly energetic docent. Byatt’s characters are themselves her dutiful puppets, always squeezed and shaped for available meaning. The Children’s Book has a cumulative energy and intelligence, and the unavoidable scythe of the Great War brings its own power to the narration, but nowhere in its hundreds of pages is there a single moment like the Countess Rostova’s free and mysterious irritation.  As in her Booker Prize–winning novel, Possession, here Byatt has constructed a complete and complex world, a gorgeous bolt of fiction, in this case pinned to British events and characters from the 1870s to the end of the Great War...the magic is in the way Byatt suffuses her novel with details, from the shimmery sets of a marionette show to clay mixtures and pottery glazes. It begins with the discovery of a boy hiding in a museum. The time is 1895, the boy is Philip Warren, and the museum is the precursor to the Victoria & Albert: the South Kensington Museum. And, oh, yes –there’s a remarkable piece of art that the boy is besotted with — the Gloucester Candlestick. However, while this may make many children’s book mavens think immediately of E. L. Konigsburg’s classical story for children, let me say straight out — A. S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book is a book for grown-ups. It is emphatically not a children’s book although it is about children, about books, about art, about the writing of children’s books, about the telling of children’s stories, about the clash between life and art, and about a whole lot more. A saga of a book teeming with complex characters, fascinating settings, intellectual provocations, and erudite prose, it gets under your skin as you get deeper and deeper into it and won’t let you go even after you reach the last page....
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