The Children's Book Book

I looked forward to read this book. I was ready for a sweeping saga about the turbulent years between the closing of the Victorian age and the dawn of the Edwardian, with all its political, artistic and social ferment, and its culmination in the war to end all wars. Who can better chronicle these years than Byatt, with her deep knowledge of the period and her knack for creating affecting, memorable characters like Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte in Possession: A Romance?

Her cast of characters here is vast, representing nearly the full spectrum of English society at the end of the 19th century. There are, among others, Fabians, potters, suffragettes, Theosophists, working class runaways, a city banker, a museum director, a Russian anarchist and a German puppet master. There are literally dozens of characters that we have to keep track of, and it could be quite a challenge to remember who is who and what their political/ philosophical views are. It doesn't help at all that each character necessarily gets a short shrift, due to having to share the stage with so many others. This constant shifting of focus means that virtually none of the characters' stories could be sufficiently explored, and that the ending is robbed of a much-needed poignancy.

We can see how she had researched the era extensively, down to its minutiae, and imbibed the spirit of the age. And it is all there on the pages --- historical voice-overs that read as if they had been pasted over from lecture notes or school textbooks. But instead of serving as a rich, multi-layered background to the story, the massive amount of data often overwhelms it, drowning the personal dramas with an intrusive recitation of dates and facts.

By the middle of the book, as the years and historical/ personal events pile up, Byatt seems to lose control of the narrative, resulting in something that reads like random updates from half-remembered Facebook buddies:

Charles/Karl: still secretly an anarchist and but am going to study at the London School of Economics anyway.

Tom: still aimless.

Julian: still gay.

Wolfgang and Leon from Germany: are here for summer camp and some skinny dipping.

A.S. Byatt: the Boer War is still going on.

You get the idea.

She seems to be very determined to update us on what everyone is doing, in strict chronological order, resulting in some clunky passages that seem to have been lifted directly from her character notes, such as "It was Hedda who, between 1903 and 1907, became more and more obsessed with suffrage, with opposition, with action, with revolt. She followed eagerly, the campaign of the militants, as they broke glass and set bombs, were imprisoned, and later took to hunger-striking and suffered forcible feeding (1909)". This is in contrast to wonderful descriptive passages elsewhere in the book. In fact, the quality of the writing is very uneven, ranging from the aforementioned clumsiness to polished pieces that we have come to expect from a writer of Byatt's caliber. I'm convinced that there is a much slenderer, but much better novel or two inside this loose, baggy monster of a book. What it desperately needs is a disciplined editor who can prune the unwieldy narrative and provide a better focus on the characters and issues.