Reviews for Home as Found

The average rating for Home as Found based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-09-22 00:00:00 Lynne Murphy A S Byatt goes back again to the Victorian era she writes about so well and has put two novellas together. "Morpho Eugenia" and "The Conjugial Angel". Both are well written and as always Byatt makes excellent use of poetry; especially Tennyson's In Memoriam in the second novella. Morpho Eugenia (the Latin name for a South American moth) is about William Adamson and Amazonian explorer who has returned and is consulting with Lord Alabaster, a cleric who is also obsessed with moths, butterflies, insects and is a generally obsessive collector. Adamson agrees to catalogue his collection and becomes entangled with his family and marries one of the daughters. This is a suitably gothic tale and is layered with symbolism. Adamson himself becomes one of the specimens. There is intrigue and secrecy and Byatt plays with the surname alabaster, using the whiteness of the skin of Adamson's wife to symbolize purity. She then plays with the idea of the "purity" and decay and degeneracy underneath. This is also set around the time that Darwinian ideas and the debate about evolution are taking place and the tensions around these ideas also underlay the novella. There are fairly lengthy descriptions of the social life of ants which are gruesome and fascinating at the same time. Matty Crompton is an interesting character and she plays the part of the intellectual foil to Adamson very well. It is a satisfying and intellectually stimulating gothic tale. The Conjugial Angel takes a look at the Victorian obsession with séances and the next world. There is a tenuous link between the two stories in the form of the sea captain. The main focus of the tale is Emily Jesse (formerly Emily Tennyson), Alfred Tennyson's sister. The séances revolve around (amongst others) Arthur Hallam, the subject of Tennyson's poem In Memoriam. Hallam was a close friend of Tennyson's who died at the age of 22; he was also engaged to Emily Tennyson. The novella takes place many years after Hallam's death and after the writing of In Memoriam. Byatt examines the persistence of love, memory and the way the living hold onto and re-interpret the dead. It is also about the guilt of those who carry on living. There is a bleakness about the séances and Byatt throws in some Swedenborgian theology just to spice things up. There are some masterly touches which provide symbolism and humour; the pet raven and the farting dog! The use of the poem is excellent and Byatt provides a master class in the meanings behind the poem. Two very good novellas providing a snapshot of the Victorian period and some of its eccentricities and hidden depths. The strong characters in these tales are the women; the men are mostly weak, led (though amiable), absent, opinionated or villainous. The women have the inner strength and usually see the way forward. Byatt writes beautifully and if you like Victorian tales this is for you.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-04-11 00:00:00 Evan Mitchell Reread * 'My name', she said, 'is Matilda. Up here at night there is no Matty. Only Matilda. Look at Me.' The above is dialogue from the book's first novella, Morpho Eugenia, and eerily echoes a recent read of mine, which eerily echoed another novel I read not too long ago. While an overall theme of Morpho Eugenia is the dichotomy between the male protagonist's present life with a Victorian English family and his past experiences in the Amazon, Matty/Matilda is revealed as a patient, reckoning force. Though I fully remembered the ending from my prior read, I was still surprised by part of it. Despite some self-indulgent sections, knowing full well that's what you get with Byatt, I once again found this novella a multi-layered, fascinating work. * Mrs. Papagay ... wondered whether other people told themselves stories in this way in their heads, whether everyone made up everyone else, living and dead, at every turn, whether this she knew about Mrs Hearnshaw could be called knowledge or lies, or both... Before starting the second novella, The Conjugial Angel, I was already swarmed by 19th-century women--real, fictional, even hybrids. With this work, I can now add two more--one fictional and the other a hybrid. As interesting and erudite as Byatt's Swedenborgian and Tennysonian riffs were, I preferred being in the heads of the women. Adding to the 'minor' theme of the unseen woman of the first novella, a 'minor' theme here is resistance to the Victorian age's angel-in-the-house mentality, a resistance that perhaps leads to Emily's willful eccentricity, perhaps also to a bit of The Yellow Wallpaper but at least not to The Madwoman in the Attic. * After reading Byatt back-to-back (along with my recent read of The Children's Book), it struck me that despite her very dark themes, these stories end on uplifting notes, endings that may be 'fantasies' (especially for the time) but are not fantastical.