Review of Possession (A.S. Byatt)

A mild-mannered literary research assistant comes across previously undiscovered letters from the renowned English poet Randolph Henry Ash which suggest an affair with another poet, Christabel LaMotte. The discovery launches both a modern story of scholarly sleuthing (by the assistant, Roland Michell, and Maud Bailey, a professor at a nearby university and a distant relative of LaMotte) and the circa-1860s romance of Ash and LaMotte.

The Victorian story is told via a series of letters and poetry, the evidence that has survived. Byatt’s command of diction in both the historical and modern idioms, and of expression in verse, are impressive. The love affair unfolds as a meeting of sympathetic intellects with a passion for myth and gradually progresses to physical encounters. Those with the patience and attention to make their way through the correspondence and the poetry will be rewarded with deeper clues as to the motivations and sensibilities of Ash and LaMotte. Other readers, impatient to get to the action and the revelations, may see these as speed bumps. A case in point—LaMotte’s visit to relatives in Brittany, as told by a cousin, is a series of journal entries that run to nearly fifty pages.

The modern narrative involving Michell and Bailey, to my mind, is not as effective. Bailey is an intriguing blend of feminist ideals, professional ambitions, and romantic sympathies, yet Michell never rises to the level of a worthy love partner, much less a scholarly adversary, as he remains preoccupied with his own inadequacies—a perceived class inequity with Bailey and the loss of notoriety for discovery of the Ash/LaMotte letters as other players get involved with their possession and publication.

Overall, this is a thoughtful and beautifully written novel, fulfilling for those with the patience to take the time to soak in it. There are grand themes here—of how myth and history relate to the foundations of love, the ethics of privacy vs. scholarly inquiry, the price of betrayal. Those looking for passion, though, will find more light than heat in Possession.