Possession: A Romance.

Byatt, A. S. (author).

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No one is going to give this book a bad review. Who would want to say anything nasty about this formidably intelligent woman who, in an act of extraordinary bravado, has attempted to refashion the novel in the form of a romance—overlaid, in the manner of a pastiche, with long passages of philosophical verse, symbolist storytelling, and a narrative of detection—about two inhibited academics. In a way, the double narrative (a relationship between nineteenth-century poets foreshadows that between the academics trying to uncover its secret) creates a postmodern novel bent on introspection; its contortions are fascinating. Nonetheless, virtue is not the same as art, and this novel ends up where most English novels come to rest: in the realm of the hollow good. The problem is perhaps that the English no longer have a relationship with their language: they either distrust or revere it. There are exceptions (one thinks, for example of Graham Swift). But contrast just five pages of Byatt’s prose with that of Salmon Rushdie or Patrick White (Indian and Australian) and you will see how clearly her work resembles an empty seashell abandoned by the sea. Admirers of John Fowles and Iris Murdoch, on the other hand, will regard this criticism as fallacious.