Viewer's review: Janet Newall reviews Possession: A Romance

Possession: A Romance
A.S. Byall
ISBN-13: 978-0679735908

I picked up a copy of Possession from a second hand book shop, and it remained largely unread on my bookshelf for years. However, I tried again last week, and have just finished the last page – breathless, spellbound and in love!

Roland Michell and Maud Bailey are lonely, unfulfilled academics who meet as they pursue their research of two Victorian poets. Roland lives and breathes Randolph Henry Ash, a Robert Browning-type figure and Maud is passionate about Christabel La Motte, a reclusive and lyrical poetess. As Maud and Roland discover a secret and desperately romantic love affair between the two long-dead poets, they fall in love with each other, all the while trying to keep their discoveries from the fiercely competitive academics who seek to possess the fragments of the lives of Ash and La Motte for themselves.

I found the plot carried me along on a tide of intrigue, romance and even comedy. I loved spotting the literary references and I thought the names chosen by Byatt added to the richness of the novel – Christabel, Maud and Roland are figures from works by Shelley, Tennyson and Browning himself. The character development was interesting – I felt Roland was drawn deliberately dull, to highlight a different shade of love than the one shared by the Victorian poets, and the conspiring academics were amusing pastiches of characters found on real campuses everywhere! Byatt also raises some interesting questions about the nature of history – do we ever really possess the past, or does it possess us, revealing itself to us only when it chooses?

This wordy, literary and complex novel is not always easy, but put in some time and effort and I challenge you not to be seduced by this heady feast of half-forgotten longings, lives and loves.

By Janet Newall, Liverpool

Janet has also recently enjoyed reading A Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood and On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan