Possession: A Romance (1990)

There are two words which explain why it took me so long to read this book. The first is “possession”, which so often has negative connotations -- “possessed” and “possessive” are used when someone has taken control of, or is otherwise claiming ownership of, something that isn’t theirs, or isn’t theirs alone. (I was curious to see if the film adaptation was on Netflix. It isn’t, so so my search just brought up a list of supposedly-related titles: all horror films. Not what I was looking for!) The second word is “affair”. I want fidelity in fictional relationships.

Possession is about two English scholars investigating a relationship between two Victorian poets. It begins when Roland discovers unaddressed drafts of a letter tucked into a book owned by Randolph Henry Ash and sets out to find out who Ash was writing to.

I expected that this would be a story I’d take a while to warm to, like the 19th century fiction I read at university. It wasn’t.

I read Possession with delight, then disappointment, and then with an urgency that surprised me and then, finally, with bittersweet pleasure. I read Possession with a set of post-it flags, so I could bookmark all the passages I liked, and once I finished it, I bought a copy and carefully transferred those flags across. Possession is about things I feel strongly about. It reminded me of some of the British books which made the biggest impression on me growing up, and also of the best bits of my university experience: libraries and poetry and fairytales and how the academic world views women of the past. It’s about the joys of language and of narratives.

It is a story about the possession of information and the possession of others’ possessions. It’s about the desires which drive these characters as they pursue letters, relationships, answers, ownership, secrecy. It is a story about knowing, and about how difficult it is to know the full story. This plays out in the way Roland and Maud uncover Randolph and Christabel’s story in pieces, like a puzzle; they find all the main pieces, in the end, but not always in chronological order and there are still gaps, and things which are hinted at but never confirmed.

I mentioned disappointment: for a while I wondered if there would be different explanations for why certain characters make certain choices, explanations which would allow the story to take a particular direction without people getting hurt. This is not what happens. But ultimately I appreciate that Possession doesn’t shy away from showing the pain which arises from those choices; it acknowledges the uncomfortable complexities.

I like the parallels between the characters in the past and in the present, and how those parallels are themes and variations.

… I have a lot of thoughts and feelings, more than I have articulated here.

Well, you will say, you are too busy writing the poetry itself, to require employment as a Muse. I had not thought the two were incompatible -- indeed they might even be thought to be complementary. But you are adamant. ( )

Possession is exactly that, an exhilarating capture of that readerly surrender. There are elements of obsession in Byatt's detective of letters saga, but such isn't the soul. The focus here isn't on the pathological. The draughts of language which overtake us like some miner's canary flow. The scholar and the poet face each other across the divide. Time's passage and vanity blur the causal arrows. The readers remain the beneficiaries.

Please don't view the film adaptation. Thank you. ( )

This book is indulgent. In its language, plot, characters, it was thick with it.

But I liked it, really really liked it. Sometimes I like to read a book that doesn't so much draw you into it, but instead oozes into your life. It wasn't that I became preoccupied with the story or the characters, I'd read it before, but Byatt has a talent with language that makes Possession a treat in my favorite sense of the word. All of its elements are too rich for most occasions, but here the confection goes down.

A friend has introduced me to a new rule of thumb - its not tacky if its real. And Byatt is the real thing. ( )

Yes, I must confess my initial dismissal of this novel (10 years ago) has evolved quite a lot, from 2 stars to a solid 4 stars. Marvellous stuff that is far warmer than perhaps I gave it credit for in my nebbishly intellectual youth. ( )

I knew nothing about this book before I read it, and I am glad I didn't. I loved being surprised along the way. The author is amazingly talented at creating and inhabiting characters. I can only imagine how difficult mastering the various forms of writing was. Letters, diaries, and oh my god the poems! It's difficult to grasp that Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte aren't real. ( )