“There are
things that happen and leave no discernible trace, are not spoken or written
of, though it would be very wrong to say that subsequent events go on
indifferently, all the same, as though such things had never been.
Two people
met, on a hot May day, and never later mentioned their meeting. This is how it
was.”
The Plot:
The book is
best understood once we divide the events into a set of two time-periods… one
in the past… a strong Victorian enchanted time of the 1800s, full of soaring
emotions and restrained passion. Here the poets Randolph Henry Ash and
Christabel LaMotte, meet by chance, painfully carve out a niche in each other’s
lives as friends, well realising that to go any further would be the end of
innocence. Then comes the present, about a century later… a time equally
trying, as two research scholars Roland Mitchell and Maud Bailey try to piece
together clues, from poems, letters and references, which would point out the
relationship between the aforementioned pair of poets and as they say, change
the face of literary history forever.
Dazed and
Confused? Well… let me try and simplify.
Roland
Mitchell is a part-time research aid to Professor Blackadder, in the British
Library, who is compiling the complete works of Henry Ash. While going through
Ash’s copy of Vico, Roland chances upon two drafts of what seemed to him like
letters written by Ash to a woman. Now in the records of history, Henry Ash was
a model husband, devoted to his wife Ellen, never even looking towards another
woman, let aside writing what seemed evidently the seeds of a love letter. This
huge digression from Henry’s preserved image, immediately set Roland on a
mission to see the draft’s fate to its end… he just had to know, and from
therein began a mad chase. His aid in this sojourn became, the reluctant, trite
Maud Bailey, who was an authority on Gender studies and on the works of
Christabel LaMotte, the poet, who Roland found grounds to believe was the woman
addressed to in the drafts. Their work was frustrating, meeting opposition from
authorities, conniving fellow researchers and their own selves… however, when
the pair finally put together all the pieces of the jigsaw in place, the
revelations were shocking not only in terms of their literary significance, but
the personal effects were far too important to deny.
The Author:
Born in
1936, Sheffield, England, Dame A S Byatt is hailed
as one of the great post-modern novelist of the English language. She has
written poetry, short stories and novels, for which she has won many critical
acclaims. Her novel Possession won the 1990 Booker Prize for Fiction.
The Movie:
The book
has been adapted into a movie starring Gwyneth Paltrow(Maud Bailey), *Aaron
Eckhart(Roland Mitchell), *Jennifer Ehle *(Christabel LaMotte) and *Jeremy Northam
(Henry Ash) among others. Although publicised as a saga of romance that would
possess each of the pairs, the movie digresses heavily from the book. However, I
would recommend it to anyone who wishes not to read the book. For them, the
movie, with its snippets of brilliance and the unusual and passionate narrative
would be enough to please. However, if you have read the book, it would be a
heavy let down as the movie essentially fails to capture Byatt and embody the
beauty that the book is.
*Who should
read the book?
*To put it
very frankly the book is not meant for everyone. It is a romance, but not only
in the classical love-story sense, but also in the Romantic sense. By this I mean,
the romance is one of nature, fancy, word play and not necessarily events…
there are pages after pages of poetry(all written by the genius Byatt), which
most readers of fiction would find tedious. Poetry reading after all is an
exercise best reserved for schoolwork drudgery. So one might be tempted to skip
such pages and read the prose… but even there in lies a rude shock. Not only
does the reader miss a lot of information, references and exchanges by leaving
out the poems but the plain word prose too, is replete with a sense of beauty
of form. Thus most of the narration is circuitous, more so when the era is that
of the past.
Thus, my
word of advice, if you feel that such heavy work is not your cup of tea for leisure
reading, abandon the thought, and do not even attempt to pick up the book. If you
see it someday in a bookshelf, turn around and quietly leave. You will be doing
yourself and the book a favour. I suggest the movie instead, as it would be a
good replacement in that case.
For those few
of you, who feel compelled, to read it. I am sure you will agree; it is a great
book. Melancholic, soaring, and magical and yet real, throbbing and alive. This
is a book, you will never forget. Let me know, how you feel once you have gone
through all its pages.
Happy Reading!
“And on the
way home, she met her brothers, and there was a rough-and-tumble, and the lovely
crown was broken, and she forgot the message, which was never delivered.”
