“The book was thick and covered with dust. It’s boards were bowed and creaking; it had been maltreated in its own time.”
Book Title: Possession
Author: A. S. Byatt
Theme: Romance
How It All Goes Down: The story opens up in London Library in the autumn of 1986. Sitting in the library is a postgraduate in literature, Roland Michell, poring over a dusty old book previously owned by a celebrated-poet (fictional) in the 19th century. He then finds two drafts of letter addressed to some woman. Shocked and thrilled by this discovery, he slips the drafts of letter into his own book and leaves the library and decides to seek the mystery woman.
My thoughts:
The first part 300 pages of the book was dragging that I thought of not finishing it but eventually came to enjoy reading and loving it. The writing is eloquent and the plot is masterfully written. Being a romantic, I daresay this is one of the most remarkable book I’ve read in awhile.
“Never have I felt such a concentration of my whole being – on one object, in one place, at one time – a blessed eternity of momentariness that went on forever – it seemed.”
“I have dreamed nightly of your face and walked the streets of my daily life with the rhythms of your writing singing in my silent brain. I have called you my Muse, and so you are, or might be, a messenger from some urgent place of the spirit where essentially poetry sings and sings. I could call you with my greater truth – my Love – there, it is said – for I most certainly love you and in all ways possible to man and most fiercely. It is a love for which there is no place in this world – a love my diminished reason tells me can and will do neither of us, a love I tried to hied cunningly from, to protect you from, with all the ingenuity at my command.”
“No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.”
To understand this more clearly, there are two timelines in this story, that of the nineteenth-century poets and the 20th century literary scholars, that is essentially interweaves with each other. The story between the Victorian poets fills my heart with so much passion and I too, was possessed, wanting to know more of what happened to them. As Roland and Maud, discovers the truth behind the poets, you will be slowly immersed into British, European and Scandinavian literature and storytelling.
This book is a reminder of how good it is to fall in love with books and the joy of reading. I definitely recommend this to fans of romance and the Victorian era.
Rating: 5/5 stars
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