הכרך הראשון ברבעייה על פרדריקה. אם החלטתי לקרוא אותו סימן שארבעת הכוכבים שנתתי לכרך השלישי שקראתי ראשון מוצדקים מבחינתי. הוא גם עושה סדר בראש לגבי מה שקראתי בחלק השלישי גם אם למעשה היה ראוי לקרוא אותו שנית. מה שלא יהיה אני לכוד. פטפטמנית עד מוות אבל סופרת מיוחדת במינה. ( )

The play's the thing...

If Proust, George Eliot, and D. H. Lawrence met in a bar and struck up a conversation about art, love, nature, desire, religion, and literature, you would have something like A. S. Byatt’s work. As I said last summer in my review of The Children’s Book, I’m ashamed it’s taken me so long to get to her work after a hazy memory of a bad experience with Possession in grad school. 



And after something like a month with The Virgin in the Garden, I’m ready to commit much of my upcoming summer to the rest of Byatt’s Frederica quartet. This book was such a pleasure to get lost in: filled with references to visual art, classical mythology, the 1953 coronation of Elizabeth II, and the Golden Age of the first Elizabeth while a verse play about her reign is being staged on the heels of the accession. Astute readers may know some references, but hardly all: Byatt’s work—and I’m going off The Children’s Book here only, as it’s more freshly imprinted on my mind—will have everyone Googling at least something.

 For me, that was part of the fun of it—and also why it took so long to get through.

Which leads me to a gripe: the main criticism of this book, from what I’ve read, and perhaps of Byatt’s work in general, is that it’s too showy, it’s too snobbish, it revels too much in its own intellectual curiosities. But so what? These aren’t books aimed to be bestsellers; these are for those who read to learn, those who want to delve deeply into history, art, music, literature, and how these impact and influence our daily lives. If those don’t have any impact on or relevance to your daily life, then Byatt isn’t writing for you. It’s not her, it’s you.



I really enjoyed how all of the characters were fleshed out here, from major to minor; not only can Byatt make your head spin with her impressive knowledge, but she knows how to tell a story and she knows how to make her characters come alive, feel as real as people you know, and compel you to want more. From the playwright/teacher Alexander who stands in the midst of all of the pageantry and quite a great deal of sexual rivalry, to the sensitive, withdrawn, “visionary” Marcus, whose genius for geometry is tempered by a strange foray into metaphysical realms with a tutor who claims to have the wisdom to decipher things; from Stephanie, who rebels against her secular, tyrannical father while at Cambridge only to conform—on almost all levels—once she’s back in the fold, to Frederica, the emblem of the new age, and about whose journeys I look forward to reading in the remaining three books.

These are all flesh-and-blood characters, and Byatt shifts from one to another in sometimes expected and sometimes prescient ways: even when the book flags a bit, it still soars. It’s a true performance, in every sense of the word.



Onward to Still Life. ( )

Engaging and interesting characters - I'm hooked and making my way through the remainder of the quartet. ( )

I am not rating this novel since I am abandoning it at page 64. Nothing in me could face any more of this...and, unfortunately I have the other three in this series on my shelf, so it amounts to ditching four books. Still, life is short and this could not be less engaging to me.

I LOVED [b:Possession|41219|Possession|A.S. Byatt|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1391124124s/41219.jpg|2246190] so much that I could not envision not liking something she had written. Sadly, this backfired on me this time.

Not putting the read dates in either, since I do not want it to count toward my yearly total.

see the notes on Reading Byatt's Fredricia Quartet, found with her fourth book, 'A Whistling Woman' ( )