The Children's Book [Paperback]

Few books have left me with such mixed reactions. The first half seemed to lack momentum, and it wasn't difficult to pin down why. Too much emphasis on the interior life of the eternally self-absorbed Olive Wellwood and her ceaseless and rather dull fairy tales. Rather too much fanciful description of the artistic impulse and, more specifically, much repetitive detail on pottery making. Plot often played second fiddle to didactic social historical analysis. And with such a large cast of characters, many are given rather short shrift and potentially dramatic situations bypassed in a sentence or two - for instance, Humphry's ongoing affair with Olive's sister, Violet.

By the second half things began to pick up. We leave the older characters behind, which is a blessing since most of them were frankly odious - only Prosper Cain and Anselm Stern offering a counterbalance to the glut of conscienceless, philandering males. As the Victorian era gives way to the Edwardian, we move into a period of restless social change and emerging feminism that gives an added dynamism to the lives of the younger generation, and generally they acquit themselves with far more wisdom and integrity than their parents. Of course, you can see where it's all going to end - in the mud and trenches of the Great War - but this adds poignancy to their youthful idealism and their struggles to establish themselves in a rapidly changing world. History, as we know, is about to overtake them. And the inevitable denouement was indeed moving, with its rash of dreaded letters and longed-for reunions.

Byatt demonstrates many qualities of a great novelist. She is a consummate social historian, and a master of characterisation - you never fail to believe in her creations as real people. She is an able wordsmith, and a profound thinker in this hugely ambitious, panoramic novel, lingering on larger themes like love and compromise, maturity, selfishness and loss.

But though moved to tears towards the end, I felt this was a deeply flawed book. On reflection, what was really lacking was not a good writer, but a good - and brave - editor. There is a great deal of repetition - we are frequently told the same thing several times, as if Byatt had forgotten that she'd said it already, or had thought that we needed reminding. (For instance, we are told no less than three times throughout the book that Olive was not particularly engaged with the suffrage movement.) Then there are the recurring and somewhat inexplicable mentions of the `beautiful' Rupert Brookes, which along with the frequent references to Oscar Wilde and William Morris gives a feel of some kind of historical name-dropping. While it's perhaps understandable, with a work of this size, that Byatt might lose track of what she has written before and replicate some of it, it is much less forgivable that her editor failed to pick it up and ask her to revise.

Also a more ruthless editor might also have persuaded Byatt to excise those tedious fairy tales. This is not actually a children's book. We don't really want page after page about lost shadows or little people or loblollies or whatever. When the repellent Olive herself describes them as `interminable worms,' I had to laugh at the aptness of her description.

I also agree with other reviewers that the end was rather badly done. After so much focus on Olive at the beginning of the novel, she is all but forgotten at the end. Ditto Philip Warren - interest in him just seems to peter out - though at least he is allowed to survive. Characters are abandoned as if their role in the novel had merely been a cameo. In life, loose ends are a fact; in literature they are something far more unsatisfying. It all feels as if Byatt had simply run out of steam, or finally exceeded her own word count.

I left the book feeling both admiring and a little sad. Admiring, because there is so much here that is truly wonderful. Sad because the novel, allowed to hit the bookstands without the judicious editing it needed, fell just short of the greatness it deserved.

A S Byatt, The Children's Book

The Sunday Times blurb on the back cover maintains that `This is the most stirring novel A S Byatt has written since Possession. This may well be the case, but since I was somewhat underwhelmed by the much-touted 1990 Booker winner I was not entirely surprised to find myself struggling with this 600+ page indulgence by a historian posing as a novelist. Novels, for me at least, work best when they show a world from a character's point of view. The less the author tells, the more the reader engages with the central consciousness. But AS Byatt tells us all about the period, the 1890s-1910s, the clothes worn, the wallpapers, the carpets, the food, the political background (Fabianism, suffragettes etc), the ancestry of her characters - at least 50 are named and not easily kept track of, their ambitions, their thoughts, their attitudes to science and art, politics and parentage. In short, the characters are overwhelmed by their setting.

One Amazon reviewer has spoken about the author's `beautiful style.' Style which is `beautiful,' is usually drawing attention to itself and this is certainly true of this book's elegant prose, written not in the voice of any character but from the four-square narrator or chronicler (the give away verb `to be' is conspicuous throughout) who hops in and out of consciousnesses. Our ex- cathedra narrator is very careful and elegant in her word choice ('insouciant' and `exiguous' for example) and revels in truisms and cliché: bland generalisations such as `Knowledge is power' or `Walking fast is a good way of channelling all sorts of emotions, fear, desire, panic,' or `we shall know each other, as the Bible says' with a wink to the reader who picks up on the sexual connotation. If you want style go to Hemingway, where epithets are sparse and usually essential to plot or character.

This novel has no plot and its characters are picked off the wall as social types; they are sensitive or dominant, predators or prey, never ambivalent. Many are little more than names, adding to the mountains of fine detail in an already cluttered book.

The saga covers the progress or regress of three inter-related families who live in changing times, the period when Victorian conventions were being undermined by shocking ideas, such as free love and women's education. Having recently read David Lodge's fictional biography of HG Wells A Man of Parts I was disappointed by the author's reticence in matters of free love.
The major theme of the book is carried by the children's novelist Olive Wellwood, who is compelled to write fairy tales, first for her children and later for herself. This is both protest and escape from the challenges of a new society. Her children, who at first line up behind her, later rebel. There is a strong undercurrent of feminism in the story: women are consistently ignored or exploited, even by the more open-minded males. It all seems terribly dated and contradictory, where liberation is buried under a plea for more fairies and fine dresses. I was reminded of a female Galsworthy; it was almost as if Virginia Woolf had never existed.

Complex and many layered this book concentrates on two families and their friends. Olive is a children's author and lives with her sister Violet, husband Humphrey and their children at a country house called Todefright. They live an apparently idyllic Bohemian existence. Benedict Fludd a genius who makes pots lives, by contrast, in Bohemian squalor with his wife Seraphita and children Imogen, Pomona and Geraint. The families are friends and have friends in common - Prosper Cain, a curator at the new Victoria and Albert museum and his children Julian and Florence, and the Methleys who are very much involved with the Fabian Society and the suffragettes.

The book is about the relationships between these people and others but it is just as much about the age they live in from 1895 to 1919. Historical personages flit into and out of the story. The main characters are inluenced by the morals and manners of the age they live in. The background is lush and decadent as the Victorian age gives way to the Edwardian. Social class is an issue and the Labour movement is gathering supporters.

The relationships between the characters are convoluted and nothing is what it seems. The arts and crafts they produce are rich and somehow redolent of decay. All are affected by the Great War and few come through it unscathed. The writing, as one might expect from this author is at once lush and austere. Characters are taken apart with a scalpel and their thoughts and feelings dissected for our entertainment. Descriptions are full of symbolism and many layered meanings. Conversations are cryptic and issues go unresolved and unmentioned.

If I have a criticism of the book it is that the end seemed a little rushed as though the author felt she needed to have an ending - satisfactory or not - for everyone in a very few pages. It seemed unfinished. Maybe this is part of a series and we shall meet at least some of these characters in later volumes. That said this is a masterpiece and every bit as good as the Booker Prize winning 'Possession'.