Possession, by A.S. Byatt

Possession
A.S. Byatt

Maybe I just don’t get it. I consider myself a literary person—I’ve read a lot of classic and contemporary literature. I consider myself educated; I have a Master’s degree in literature. But I just don’t get Byatt’s Possession. What is wrong with me? Everyone else sings this book’s praises.

Well, not me.

Possession has been recommended by nearly everyone I know. Ok, that’s an exaggeration, but close. And, based on everything I’d heard, I thought that, when everything was said and done, I’d recognize it as a great book as well. It didn’t happen.

This book took me forever to read because I simply couldn’t get into it. I could give a shit about every single one of these characters. If you are unaware of the storyline, Possession is about two literary scholars who are each researching a poet. As they pour through the old letters of their respective poets, they uncover the secret love affair that these two carried on. Meanwhile, the two researchers fall in love. Conflict arises because other academics want these love letters, as this research is obviously earth-shattering and would forever change academia. So the race is on to find all of these letters and piece together the zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Oh, sorry. I fell asleep.

Good lord, I consider myself an academic; I love learning, and I love literature, and I love poets. I even love secret affairs. I love mysteries!! So I should love this book, right?

Allow me the following analogy. I love brownies. And French fries. And cookie-dough ice cream. OOH, and butter cake. I LOVE ME SOME BUTTER CAKE. And coffee! I love coffee. I also love cheese, like gouda. And grilled cheese sandwiches. And Red Bull. And salad with raspberry vinaigrette dressing. Using the above logic, if I combine these things into one big meal, I’d have THE BEST MEAL EVER, right? Wrong. I’d have pile of shit that most Fear Factor contestants couldn’t even eat. That’s what Possession was like. A brownie-cookie-dough-butter cake-coffee-cheese-and-Red-Bull salad with French fries.

Ok, perhaps I’m being unfair. The love letters were good, and I was interested in watching the love affair unfold through them. But when the book shifted to the two dolts performing the research, I wanted to gouge out my eyes in Oedipal despair. MY GOD, I berated myself, WHAT HAVE I DONE? WHY, YE GODS, WHY HAVE YOU LET ME BE DUPED BY THE HYPE THAT IS POSSESSION?

And the ending!! For a book that is touted as “literature” even though only a few years old, I expected the ending to be a bit better than this. I suppose it is fitting that, in keeping with the mystery that the characters seek to solve, the ending is no better than a Scooby Doo episode. And at least that show had Scooby and Shaggy, enjoyable and fun characters, not these annoying nerds. And I’m a nerd, so you know these characters must be bad.

Back to the novel’s contrived and improbable ending. The lead male character (a.k.a. boring researcher #1) and his new girlfriend (a.k.a. the other boring researcher) go to a pub with his ex-girlfriend. Never mind that he and his ex have suffered through a particularly bad relationship and breakup—he’s going to ask her help in his quest. She and her new boyfriend immediately and unreservedly agree, of course. Then after a very-Scooby chase scene, they catch the bad guy, who is in the act of stealing the last few letters necessary to understanding the mystery! Thankfully they save them, because at this point in the novel, I was only continuing to read the novel just so I could see what these letters contained. In case you were curious, after being “caught,” the bad-guy academic makes some very Scooby comments. You know the drill: “I would have gotten away for it, too, if it hadn’t been….” Ugh.

A few people have said that the best part of the novel is Byatt’s poetry, which is the poetry of these fictional poets. Sure. No offense, but whoever said this to me should never recommend another book to me again. In reality, the best part of the book is the letters that these two poets share. If you want good poetry, go read REAL POETS. I’ve read that the male poet is based on Browning. Great. Go read him, not this silliness. Who calls this book literature?

And YES, I do understand that I am a twenty-seven-year-old NOTHING, who has written NOTHING*, and will never writing anything like Possession, which I am okay with. If Satan came to me and said: Give me your soul and you will be the author of Possession and will achieve literary success for having written it, I’d have to politely refuse. I’m ok with writing my blog, and I’m entitled to my opinion. And I recognize the irony in critiquing the writing of others when my own is subpar / nonexistent. Deal with it.

*That’s actually not true. I was once editor (and sole writer) of The (now-defunct) Inside Scoop. I was 11, and the magazine was the shit, let me tell you. My mother STILL has copies. And I also once wrote a beautiful story about some animals in the forest, lead by a noble stag whose name I now forget.** AND, I’ve written lots of A papers, some even in French, so there.

**It's several days later, and I remember the stag's name: Nestor. The wise stag was Nestor. Now THAT'S literature, folks.

In a nutshell: Apparently I’m the only one who hates this book. So go ahead and read it, nerd. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Bibliolatry Scale: 1 out of 5 stars