Possession, A Romance by A.S. Byatt


Here's my first book completed for the Awards Challenge! It won the Man Booker Prize Award in 1990. I've looked forward to reading it for awhile and I'm happy to have finally done it. However, I was just a little bit disappointed. I thought it would be more.... hmmm... more.... I don't know.... page-turning, or quickly moving or something. It was actually quite slow. I liked the story, about two scholars each with a particular poet as their speciallty. One of them discovers that there may have been a link in the past with the lives of these two poets. So together, they investigate and unravel the mystery. All of it is done with journal entries, letters and poems from the these poets and people in their lives. I loved how she did this, except the poetry. I must admit...shhhhh.... that I skipped the really long poems! But other than that, it was really quite good. Amazing that stories this complicated can come out of someone's head! Amazing!

4 comments:

    Ooo, yes, I liked this one, too, even though I skipped those really long poems same as you.

    I love this book. I will admit that it's not exactly fast-paced, though. Still, I found the story so enthralling.

    You are not alone - I didn't skip the poems myself, but I know of others who did. I did enjoy them, but you really don't miss all that much of the story by skipping them.

    i think they may have made of movie of this with gwyneth paltrow.

    Yes, AFTER I read the book, I realized there was a movie, so I rented and watched it just last week. I really liked it and thought they did a pretty good job of the book to movie thing. It seem simplified though, but still... pretty good.