And of course Byatt being Byatt, she treats us to some marvelous tales from Olive's (and of course her own) pen.
Whether she is summoning up the mud and blood of Flanders fields, the dissecting room at a fledgling medical school for women, the brutality of life at a school for privileged young boys - and countless other places, such are the protean splendors of this novel - her touch is sure.Ĭhildren's literature in that poem and the book's very title stem from the protagonist Olive Wellwood, a celebrated author of fairy tales and such books for young people.
What you see here, as you do throughout the novel, is the strength and fire of Byatt's imagination as she hurls herself into another time. "And when I die, my spirit will pass by/ Through Sulphur Avenue and Devil's Wood/ To Jacob's Ladder along Pilgrim's Way/ To Eden Trench, through Orchard, through the gate/ To Nameless Trench and Nameless Wood, and rest." Nonsense smiles/ As shells and flares disorder tiny lines. Horrors lurk/ In Jekyll Copse and Hyde Copse. "Remembering boyhood, soldier poets recall/ The desperate deeds of Lost Boys, Peter Pan,/ Hook Copse, and Wendy Cottage. The first half of the book takes place in the 1890s, but by the story's conclusion, the characters - and the enthralled readers - have hurtled through the new century's tumultuous first two decades, including the devastation and carnage of World War I.Īnd here at the novel's end is where Byatt again demonstrates her audacity - and the artistry to match - by actually writing poems in the voice of one of the characters she has created, authentic Georgian poetry of the prewar years giving way to coruscating verse typical of the great war poets: Once again, she transports us back into the 19th century, this time to its last years as the Victorian ethos empties out into the various channels that lead society into the 20th century. Now with her massive, majestic new novel, "The Children's Book," which was short-listed for this year's Man Booker Prize, Byatt shows that same dazzling capacity. And not just pale imitative stuff, but truly 19th century-seeming poetry, utterly believable, with an unmistakable ring of authenticity. We saw in her groundbreaking novel "Possession" her uncanny ability to project herself into a past age, not only creating fictional Victorian poets but actually writing verse for them. Byatt, she is so amazingly talented and so prodigiously and fearlessly imaginative, that the question really becomes more: Is there any other writer today who can pull off the kind of artistic feat that she can? It has become commonplace when praising a writer's craft to pose the question: How many other writers could do what he or she has done? But in the case of A.S.
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