It’s honestly difficult to know what to say about Possession, except: thank you, AS Byatt, for writing me this book? I have to assume I was the exact intended audience, since it has simply everything I love or find fascinating. I mean, admittedly I am a stranger to Byatt and when this came out I was a very small child, but even so it’s hard not to feel like it was written with my exact preferences in mind. Victorian writers! A mystery (of sorts)! Academic women trying to work out how to balance all the different competing bits of their hearts and minds! Long epistolary sections! Parodies of various literary ponciness that I personally find irritating! Windswept landscapes! Rain! British seaside towns! Walking holidays! Weird class tensions between different types of university! Metafiction! The history of science c. 1850! It’s just all exactly my cup of tea. I love it so.
I did not know what to expect from Possession. It was one of those “oh, that’s supposed to be a classic, isn’t it? I’ll get to it one day” books. It’s been sitting on my shelves for just over a year – I think just after I bought it, I read a review which said it was too self-consciously clever and pretentious, which is one of my least favourite things in any novel, and thus it sat untouched for a long time. Still, since I had a nice long stretch where I wasn’t going to be writing blog posts, and this is a bit of a monster (600+ pages), I thought the time was right to give it a try. I am so glad I did.
Possession is a literary mystery of sorts. It opens with Roland Michell, postgraduate literature student, who is studying the life and works of Victorian poet Randolph Ash. He works for irascible academic James Blackadder, and trapped in a mutually unhappy relationship that he can’t see his way out of. One ordinary day, Roland visits an academic library to fact-check something in an old book of Randolph Ash’s that is kept in their archives. To his shock, he finds the unfinished draft of a letter tucked into it – a letter Ash began writing to an unknown woman he met at a party – a woman who is clearly not his wife, though scholars have always assumed he was faithful. Roland keeps quiet about the discovery, and investigates on his own to find out who the woman might be. Once he forms a theory, he is put in touch with Dr Maud Bailey, a postdoc at the University of Lincoln. He meets her to cautiously sound her out about her theories – and from that point on they begin to uncover a much more remarkable story than seemed apparent from that one letter. As they work, together and separately, they begin to find that they are up against the clock, because they are not the only people who want those letters…
In the best tradition of Victorian (and Victorian-inspired) doorstoppers, this has half a dozen subplots and countless themes. I can’t possibly do justice to them in a review. Many of them are tied into the mystery plot and thus can’t be discussed without spoilers. I am pretty glad I went into this book without much idea what to expect, because I kept discovering new things that delighted me. Unlike those Victorian authors – who were often writing for serialisation, and I suspect sometimes added in subplots for the sake of extra words – Byatt draws on all her themes and subplots throughout the novel, even in sections that aren’t directly related, and I found that they were knit together into a very satisfying ending.
One thing I will mention is that – although a) I am not much of a romantic in the first place, and b) on the rare occasion that I can be convinced to buy into a romance, it’s never one that even hints at infidelity – I found the connection between Maud and Roland totally compelling. I also loved the letters between Randolph Ash and the recipient – whose identity I will keep quiet about, since going down all the rabbit holes with Roland is part of the fun. One of the questions the book is asking is about the value and perils of solitude: independence can be wonderful, and horrible; that it is creatively necessary, and terribly lonely; is it even possible for anyone to be truly independent in the end, regardless of their choices? At least, that’s what I think Byatt is asking, specifically in the context of female academics but worked out in other settings too. One of the letters incorporated into the novel contains this little snippet, after Ash asks the woman to meet him in person:
My Solitude is my Treasure, the best thing I have. I hesitate to go out. If you opened the little gate, I would not hop away—but oh how I sing in my gold cage.
Maud and the Victorian woman who wrote that letter both have to work out what that means in the context of their relationships and their work – friendships as well as romances. It is true to a lesser extent for Roland, as well. I find this much more interesting than the straightforward romance plot that I would generally expect. (It’s also one of the underlying themes of Gaudy Night by DL Sayers, a forever-favourite novel for me. Byatt mentions Sayers in her introduction, if memory serves, and I could see the fingerprints of Gaudy Night all over this novel).
Perhaps (perhaps?) my favourite thing about this novel is the characters. Every character is complicated and real and layered – especially Maud and Roland, but all of them, even those with tiny walk-on roles. (Except Mortimer Cropper, who is a stereotyped-to-the-bone acquisitive American businessman who thinks the world is his for the buying. Sorry, Americans. You also have one of the best characters in the book, barking mad feminist academic Leonora Stern, so I hope that makes up for it). It feels like such an expansive, lived-in universe. It feels like the real world – like something mad and wonderful and ridiculous happening in the real world – and I think this is because the characters are so real. You can really tell that Byatt is interested in all her characters, that she cares about them and treats them with respect – even the ones who are obstructive or difficult or actively unpleasant. I was reminded when I was reading of a quote I really loved when I read A Swim in a Pond in the Rain earlier this year.
“Of what is Tolstoy confident? That people are more similar to him than different. That he has an inner Vasili, an inner aged host, an inner Petrushka, an inner Nikita. This confidence serves as a gateway to (what reads as) saintly compassion.”
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain – George Saunders
I don’t think this novel reads as having saintly compassion. I do think that it reads like a book written by someone thinks people are more similar to her than different, and who has therefore approached them with curiosity and respect and thoughtfulness. This is maybe, more than anything else, the thread that ties all my very favourite books together – so it’s perhaps not surprising that I loved this so much. I’ve immediately put all of AS Byatt’s essays on my wishlist, since I really want to read her writing more about her process of making characters.
I can quite see why people describe this as pretentious or smug or overwritten. It is all those things. But consider: when I hold it to my heart, I feel joy. What more can you ask of a book than that?
louloureads 
If a book gives you that much pleasure, then who cares about the opinions of other people?! Byatt isn’t for me – I read half of The Children’s Book and that was enough – but I’m glad you loved this one so much. Your comments about the book having been written with you in mind remind me of how I felt about Rose Nicolson… 😀
Yes, I can definitely see that Byatt is not for everyone, and I actually agree with most of the criticism I’ve read of this novel – it just didn’t affect my reading experience at all. Those moments when it feels like an author has written a book especially for you are rare and worth enjoying!
I think Possession is also on my shelves somewhere, and for a lot longer than a year. But on your recommendation I have added it to my Audible library, so I will get to it sooner rather than later.
I hope you enjoy it! I will be interested to hear how you get along with the audiobook in terms of all the different epistolary sections and extracts from books etc.
I read Possession when I was in college. At the time, I was also working in a group home, so I was able to read while I was working, but with some distraction. As a result, I don’t remember much of this book at all. I do recall how the colors gold and green were significant somehow, and I see that the quote you provided uses the word gold. I remember circling every time the words gold or green were used, and wondering what to make of it in a literary fashion. Oh, the good old days of an English major (that is sarcasm).
I didn’t notice any of that stuff when I was reading although I’m sure subconsciously it affected my reading experience. (I can recall a couple of scenes where green and gold feature prominently as colours, but not at all in a way that impeded my enjoyment). Yes, while I loved studying English at school I’m quite glad I didn’t take it on to university as I think it would have affected my love of reading!
This is a delightful review to read because your joy over reading this book is so clear. I’m not sure if I’m drawn to this book or am just being sold on how fantastic your experience was reading it but I do want to read it now!
Thanks! It was a very joyful reading experience. I hope you enjoy it too if you give it a try!
The Children’s Book is one of my all-time favourite books. Possession not so much, but I think I read it too young.
This is my first Byatt, and I’m now very much looking forward to reading The Children’s Book, though it sounds very different. Yes, I’m glad I didn’t read this ten years ago, as I think I wouldn’t have enjoyed it nearly as much.