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Il Libro Dei Bambini (2009)

by A.S. Byatt(Favorite Author)

3.64 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

8806199242 (ISBN13: 9788806199241)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Einaudi

review 1: Portrait of a number of interconnected families mostly involved in the arts from roughly 1900 through the end of the First World War. The focus is on the artistic mentality compared to others that are more practical, with the practical minded "winning out" by the end of the story. It was well written, but had too many characters and was very long. I read in Wikipedia that the author needed a spreadsheet to keep her characters in order, and I resorted to having the Wikipedia page on the book describing the characters opened as I listened to this audiobook to keep track myself. In comparison to Byatt's earlier "Possession", this covered so much ground that it wasn't as passionate or focused. This felt more comparable to Ken Follett's recent "Fall of Giants" in covering an ov... moreerlapping time with large families to follow. I enjoyed this more than Follett's book, through, as the writing was top notch and the focus on pottery and children's book writing and the comparison to more practical fields of medicine, service, and banking was interesting.
review 2: In this year, when so much attention is being paid to the outbreak of the First World War, it is of great interest to read A.S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book (publ. 2009), which covers the years 1890-1918, primarily in the south of England. It is set amongst people working in ‘cultural’ fields: museum managers and workers, potters and other craftspeople, theatre people of many types including musical theatre, marionette theatre and, especially, children’s theatre (and what might be called children’s theatre for adults), writers, cultural critics of a popular kind and so on, but also including suffragettes and other activists. The range of characters is enormous, but Byatt’s skill can be seen in the way they remain clearly distinct from each other in her and the reader’s minds, and always demanding our sympathy: as long as you pay attention when they are introduced you will have no difficulty in following their fortunes, and much pleasure in doing so. There is also a wide range of ‘historical’ characters, both English and German, and the result of all this is a vivid and unforgettable portrait of one large segment of English life, a segment not always paid sufficient attention by historians.Byatt’s style is never less than elegant and expressive, although it can also cover a range of dialects. In fact the linguistic range of the book is one of its delights. I found it especially useful in this regard to listen to the audiobook while reading the printed text. I have a special interest here since the reader on Audible is Nicolette McKenzie, and when we were students at Victoria University of Wellington Nikki and I shared the stage in a number of productions. Even those without this interest will, I think, find her reading of The Children’s Book a dramatic tour de force.The book’s title should not lead a potential reader to expect anything less than a profoundly adult, intellectually and emotionally mature book. The title refers in part to one character, Olivia Wellwood, who is a compulsive writer of children’s stories not only for publication but also for her family (apparently this character is based in part on E.S. Nesbit). But there is a much wider range of references in the title and ultimately there is a sense in which all people in the pre-war world were children who had to grow up dramatically and rapidly when they experienced the horrors of the First World War. After 1918 people in Europe were fundamentally different from people before 1914, and this difference can well be compared to that between children and adults. Peter Pan, the eternal child, is left isolated and bereft in the pre-war world. less

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