The first sentence of this book intrigued me beyond reason. "The book was thick and black and covered with dust." Seriously - this has my name written all over it. I love old books, intrigue, good writing and classic novels. Possession is about two literary scholars who discover a possible secret history between two (fictional) famous poets. While they are on the trail to discover the real history they fall in love.The first thing I noticed was how much more interesting the long-dead poets were than the living people who were searching through their histories. But I muddled through.
The way the history of the poets was presented was actually pretty great - mainly old letters and journals. Some written by the poets themselves, some written by others who knew them. It was interesting how Byatt made the poets come alive through these mediums. I was totally on board with that.
There is a lot of poetry in this book - a lot. I have a huge respect for poetry, similar to my respect for quantum mechanics, heart surgery and economics. The problem is that I just don't get it.
As I got further into the book I was getting nervous because I was wondering how much of the story I was missing out on by skipping over all of the poetry so I turned to my trusty workmate and poem-lover DS. I randomly chose a poem out of the book and asked her "What the hell does this mean?"
She skimmed it and said "Oh, well....yeah. He's talking about how beautiful her skin is, and how it looks on her neck between her ear and her shoulder...."
"Really?!" I blurt out as I snap the book from her hands frantically scanning the page for the missing clues.
Once I got to the end, I felt like I had missed out on a big part of the book due to my lack of poetry-detective-skills. But then again, I got enough out of it that I wasn't completely defeated. Although the boring main characters, long random inserts about how much the poet liked sea anemones and middle-of-the-book-flash-back-spoilers didn't do much for me overall.
5 comments:
When I read this book, I skipped over the poetry parts too and didn't really worry that I missed to much; I seemed to get all the juicy details. Maybe it's a fiction book written like a non-fiction book; you don't have to read everything, nor do you have to read it in order. Anyway, even though I haven't read the whole book, I'm a big fan of the main story. It was def very intriguing.
Advice: don't see the movie. It was horrid! They turned Randall's (I think that was his name) character into an over-confident obnoxious American! It was a travesty! Or actually, if you are the type who enjoys watching something that you can shake your fist at, watch the movie.
I finally finished Sybil (it got better again near the end... someone just needs to edit a good 200 pages out of it), and started Sarah's Key. It's got a good start!
THANK YOU. I'm glad you had to skip parts too. And I agree, the characters in the past were much more interesting than the ones in the present. It's like, do we not make people that passionate anymore??
Yay proud nerds!
Okay, I am seriously against skipping any part of any book (which is probably why I so rarely finish A BOOK). But really, I feel like I've cheated.
Having said that you pick much more challenging reads so you do what you gotta do!
I'm not big into poetry, either (at least not a whole book filled with long passages of poetry)-- so yay for admitting that you skipped through most of the poems! :)
When I'm skipping parts that means I am SOL on the book. I like to be enveloped by a book. I find poetry seeking tiresome, so why go there if you don't have to?
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