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Product Description
Cassandra is an Oxford don; Julia, her sister, a bestselling novelist. They share a set of disturbing memories of a strange childhood game and of Simon, the handsome young neighbour who loved them both. Years later Simon re-enters their lives via a television programme on snakes and intrudes into their uneasy compromise of mutual antagonism and distrust. The old, wild emotions surge back, demanding and urgent, and this time the game is played out to a fatal finsih. Rich in ideas, subtle and exhilarating, THE GAME is a superb novel.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
My personal favorite thing about Byatt's novels are the visual aspects - the shapes and structures that take form in my mind while I read. "The Game" left me with strange, disturbing and demanding images that have stayed with me for a long time. In the novel the author moves on the borderline between reality and imagination, and plays with questions of fact and fiction. Byatt does this well. A strong narrative is important in a good novel - and "The Game" has a fascinating and well constructed plot - although I did find it a little "wordy" and slow at times - like Iris Murdoch. (Brilliant, but sometimes rather boring, to be honest.) AND: For once "idea-people" come accross as real people in a novel, not just literary constructions. So this is a story about real people and abstract ideas and their complex unity. I feel at home in it...
Format:Paperback
A tale of two sisters, jealous and distrustful of each other but nevertheless with a strong bond, and a need for each other. Cassandra, shy, difficult and moody, is an Oxford don; Julia, insecure, glamorous, vulnerable, a bestselling novelist. As children growing up in Northumberland and unhappy at boarding school they invented an intense game, creating a magical land (rather like the Bronte sisters' Gondal and Angria) populated with characters from Arthurian myth. But as adults their mistrust of each other grew - when Julia intrudes on Cassandra's relationship with Simon, their intense young neighbour, Cassandra tries to break off contact with her younger sister. Years later, their father's death brings the two sisters back into each other's company - at the same time, Simon re-enters their lives, initially via a television programme on South America (he has become a naturalist with an expertise in snakes) and, in the second part of the book, in the flesh, as he returns to London and to seek out both women. Although they try to build up a 'normal' friendship, rivalry springs up between the sisters all over again, even though Julia is married with a child. Keen to understand her sister's feelings for Simon, and to work out her own fear of her sister, Julia explores her thoughts about Cassandra in fiction - with devastating results.
This is powerful writing, and from the period before Byatt was trying too hard to show her intellectual and academic skills: yes, there's plenty of reference to literature, and history, and she's keen to show that she knows plenty about snakes, but this is also a very gripping story, with real flesh-and-blood characters. I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of Cassandra and Julia's childhood and their game, the ironic depiction of Oxford life (though perhaps this is satirized a little too much?) and the descriptions of 1970s London in all its fashionable splendour. Byatt has some very intelligent things to say about writing too. And her description of Cassandra's breakdown was convincing and eloquent. If I stop short of giving the novel five stars it is because the men in it are a bit disappointing. Simon remains rather an enigma (and how, if he didn't go to university, did he become a leading naturalist?), Cassandra's priest Father Rowell is plain creepy, Ivan, the television director is a stereotype of the slightly sleazy media-man, and Thor, Julia's Norwegian husband, though an interesting creation, comes across as a rather harsh fanatic. I ended the book longing for some more sympathetic male characters.
Nevertheless, this is a well-crafted, and thought-provoking book, and one of Byatt's most approachable. Definitely a good introduction to her work.
This is powerful writing, and from the period before Byatt was trying too hard to show her intellectual and academic skills: yes, there's plenty of reference to literature, and history, and she's keen to show that she knows plenty about snakes, but this is also a very gripping story, with real flesh-and-blood characters. I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of Cassandra and Julia's childhood and their game, the ironic depiction of Oxford life (though perhaps this is satirized a little too much?) and the descriptions of 1970s London in all its fashionable splendour. Byatt has some very intelligent things to say about writing too. And her description of Cassandra's breakdown was convincing and eloquent. If I stop short of giving the novel five stars it is because the men in it are a bit disappointing. Simon remains rather an enigma (and how, if he didn't go to university, did he become a leading naturalist?), Cassandra's priest Father Rowell is plain creepy, Ivan, the television director is a stereotype of the slightly sleazy media-man, and Thor, Julia's Norwegian husband, though an interesting creation, comes across as a rather harsh fanatic. I ended the book longing for some more sympathetic male characters.
Nevertheless, this is a well-crafted, and thought-provoking book, and one of Byatt's most approachable. Definitely a good introduction to her work.
9 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I became quite wrapped up in this novel. The Game refers not only to a childhood invention between the two sisters, Julia and Cassandra, but also to the ups and downs of their adult relationship. Neither are likeable characters (and we are left wondering whether their Quaker undirected up-bringing moulded them that way) but Byatt creates them as believable people with whom we can identify. The plot has several layers, and even at the end we are not sure which sister has won.
I loved the ambiguity, the way that the novel can be taken at face value or seen in the light of a game with no rules, indeed a game to the death. The sisters both love and hate each other; Cassandra is a private person who resents and is cruel to her sister; Julia is always trying to gain Cassandra's attention without any respect for her privacy. They part company after involvement with a young neighbour, Simon, but are later re-united on their father's death.
Julia attempts to become part of Cassandra's life again, and in doing so gains material for her latest novel. She then publishes the novel, almost a biographical work of Cassandra and her relationship with Simon, the ultimate betrayal of Cassandra's need for privacy. Cassandra finds the intrusion unbearable and commits suicide.
A review cannot do justice to the intensity of feeling that Byatt inspires. There are some passages which are too detailed, and the portrayal of Cassandra's insanity, Simon's fascination with snakes, also some of the Quaker background, become boring at times. However it is worth skipping through those parts to get the full enjoyment out of this excellent novel.
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