Why would it count? I no longer remember. Probably it was because she was a British writer, and the book was literary, and I could potentially discuss it and Byatt in the 20th century part of my Comps. I also read Gail Godwin's Father Melancholy's Daughter that summer. It would have been the summer of 1991, I think, even though both novels came out in 1990.
Back to A. S. Byatt and Possession. I remember being thrilled by the novel, thrilled and intrigued and wishing I could create something similar. I reread it a few years later and no longer felt that way--it was all wearying to me. I wonder how it would feel today--that question, though, will have to wait.
I read other Byatt novels, which didn't entrance me in the same way, and gradually, I lost track of her.
I was also interested in her because she was the sister of Margaret Drabble, an author whom I loved intensely in grad school. I read that the two sisters didn't have much to do with each other as grown ups, and they didn't discuss why. Was it sibling rivalry? Was it just overblown by anxious journalists? Did the sisters not like the autobiographical aspects of each other's books? Hard to say for sure.
Now I admire their reticence. Not everything needs to be discussed, particularly not for the pleasure of strangers. We don't have many writers like Byatt and Drabble anymore, and it's hard to imagine that we ever will again.
2 comments:
Re-read Posession again recently, and it absolutely dazzled me - but fir different reasons than in the nineties. But if you want her very best work, you have to read her short stories - like Haruki Murakami , she is best trapped in small spaces. Little Black Book of Stories, Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, snd the mermaid story alone in the recent Medusa’s Ankles - you will love her all over again.
It’s Jeannine, btw!
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