mepresley's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
While there are parts of the novel that I enjoyed very much, and while I appreciated its experimentation, overall I did not think that it held together or provided any kind of narrative satisfaction. The main story does have a beginning, middle, and end:
However, the various threads reach no conclusion: we see bits and pieces of Frederica's Laminations, but not its conclusion; we hear parts of Agatha's adventure story but not the end; we read large chunks of Babbletower but not the meat of it, and the novel bizarrely ends with the conclusion of Babbletower, clearly far removed from the last segment of the text we were given. I do think Byatt captured the mood of the 1960s and the novel is situated firmly within real socio-historical events from the time period. I enjoyed the various literary allusions as well as the plot of the committee on teaching grammar, but only because I'm an English PhD. I can't imagine these appealing in any way to an average reader. Aside from, perhaps, the pieces of Babbletower, I think the novel could have--and probably should have-- done without basically everything else mentioned here.
It took me a long time to finish this book, compared to how quickly I usually read, and if I wasn't someone who was very committed to finishing books that I start, I would have abandoned this one long before its conclusion. Certainly a much different experience for me that Byatt's Possession, which remains one of my favorite novels.
Spoiler
Frederica is in an abusive marriage, Frederica flees that marriage, and Frederica is granted a divorce--though the finding is actually in favor of her husband's counter-suit--and custody of their son; also, Frederica appears to reconcile with the super-weird John Ottakar. The side-story of the legal case of Babbletower also has its ending: the publisher and Jude lose the original obscenity trial but win on appeal.However, the various threads reach no conclusion: we see bits and pieces of Frederica's Laminations, but not its conclusion; we hear parts of Agatha's adventure story but not the end; we read large chunks of Babbletower but not the meat of it, and the novel bizarrely ends with the conclusion of Babbletower, clearly far removed from the last segment of the text we were given. I do think Byatt captured the mood of the 1960s and the novel is situated firmly within real socio-historical events from the time period. I enjoyed the various literary allusions as well as the plot of the committee on teaching grammar, but only because I'm an English PhD. I can't imagine these appealing in any way to an average reader. Aside from, perhaps, the pieces of Babbletower, I think the novel could have--and probably should have-- done without basically everything else mentioned here.
It took me a long time to finish this book, compared to how quickly I usually read, and if I wasn't someone who was very committed to finishing books that I start, I would have abandoned this one long before its conclusion. Certainly a much different experience for me that Byatt's Possession, which remains one of my favorite novels.
shoshzee's review against another edition
4.0
this is a re-read. I decided to re-read the entire Frederica Quartet.
It's a little over long. I also wonder how many people who got this when it came out who loved Possession, not realizing it was third in a series and not nearly as accessible. (Although that's definitely the appeal for me even if it involves lookng up a fair # of the references I probably missed the first time.
When I read this the first time a major response was that I clearly needed to read Howard's End. Which is something I also re-read recently because I doubt I understood much the first time around.
It's not my favorite of the three (I somehow never got up to a Whistling Woman) and it's over long at points but I love the literary word Frederica thrives in. I also relate a lot more to her being trapped in a marriage where she couldn't be herself.
Also I could feel a glimmer of what it must have been like without no fault divorce and how it had to be for any woman trying to get a divorce where there's such an imbalance of power.
The twin Ottokers reminded me a bit of Murdoch's The Flight From the Enchanter.
Also it felt like we were back in mid-century England. Of course I wouldn't necessarily know how accurate that is not having lived there but Byatt manages to imbue the narrative in such a way that makes me feel I can understand it somehow.
It's a little over long. I also wonder how many people who got this when it came out who loved Possession, not realizing it was third in a series and not nearly as accessible. (Although that's definitely the appeal for me even if it involves lookng up a fair # of the references I probably missed the first time.
When I read this the first time a major response was that I clearly needed to read Howard's End. Which is something I also re-read recently because I doubt I understood much the first time around.
It's not my favorite of the three (I somehow never got up to a Whistling Woman) and it's over long at points but I love the literary word Frederica thrives in. I also relate a lot more to her being trapped in a marriage where she couldn't be herself.
Also I could feel a glimmer of what it must have been like without no fault divorce and how it had to be for any woman trying to get a divorce where there's such an imbalance of power.
The twin Ottokers reminded me a bit of Murdoch's The Flight From the Enchanter.
Also it felt like we were back in mid-century England. Of course I wouldn't necessarily know how accurate that is not having lived there but Byatt manages to imbue the narrative in such a way that makes me feel I can understand it somehow.
siria's review
5.0
[b: Babel Tower|91688|Babel Tower|A.S. Byatt|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|1063051] is an immensely pleasurable reading experience. Not because it's a particularly cheery book—god, it's not—but because it demands such intensity, such devotion of the reader and repays it all with interest. The intertextuality of it all is such a delight—books within books, Babbletower hidden within [b: Babel Tower|91688|Babel Tower|A.S. Byatt|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|1063051], the stories, the letters, the references to other novels—all giving rise to a level of introspection which feels organic rather than forced. Her characters are all incredibly vivid, even if I don't think I would particularly like to spend much time with any of them—Frederica is a little too much of a woman of her time—and really I do think that [a: A.S. Byatt|1169504|A.S. Byatt|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1388376297p2/1169504.jpg] is one of the most intelligent authors working today.
pbandgee's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
paulcowdell's review
1.0
It came as a genuine surprise to me that an author so self-consciously working on Big Ideas, including (and contained within) The Big Novel, should have laboured at such great length to produce such a staggeringly trivial and inconsequential book.
Part of the problem is that the book is endlessly about writers writing about writing. (It's noticeable that all of the authors she cites/invokes throughout the book's parading of its own intellectual weight contrived to deal with problems of writing in the process of writing about something else). I differ with fans of Literary Fiction over whether this has any merit in and of itself, but Byatt's interminable Serious Ruminations are simultaneously wholly orthodox and staid, banal, and vapidly unresolved. She piles up the evidence, but the higher the pile the less she obviously has to say.
Perhaps the most revealing aspect of its abject failure on its own terms is its character as an extremely dull Historical Novel (a genre capable of even greater dullness than Literary Fiction, especially when performed as tediously and perfunctorily as the penultimate chapter here). I think we are supposed to view Frederica's course through the changing thought patterns of the 1960s as revelatory, but Byatt fails because she is never unflinching about the challenges to the previous orthodoxy. When portraying the artistic and moralistic provocateurs of the period (many of whom genuinely were silly and vacuous and legitimately deserving of ridicule) she's all too quick to resort to caricatures even lazier than the figures she's parodying. But before you suggest it, the thinking is so slovenly that these don't constitute acute satires.
More importantly, she does this because she is stacking the deck against these intellectual challenges in a quite transparent way. I was suckered into reading this by a thumbnail portrait of the Marquis de Sade on the dustjacket to the hardback (well, more fool me, so I have to accept total responsibility for the time I have wasted reading it), but the fictional novel that is prosecuted for obscenity in the book - Jude Mason's Babbletower - is entirely fraudulent as any kind of representation of Sade's gauntlet in the face of civilisation. Like every other bit of represented writing here, including Frederica's reluctant and unconvincing experimentation with Burroughs's cut-ups, Babbletower is striving to articulate only the most tiresomely hidebound moralising. Byatt's flirtation with the Moors Murders trial is peripheral and unengaged, as if she wants to make some cheap hostile comment but not really get at its core. So, in a prep-school matronly style, we are told that Brady read Sade, and Babbletower is compared with Sade in court, and that should be enough for anyone, so let's just go back to the storyline of Frederica's divorce, shall we?
Byatt can write, that is clear enough, but why? About 290 pages in I was wondering why I'd bothered. Another dozen pages and I was past halfway, so thought I might as well persist, but there is no fundamental unfolding of thought or argument beyond that point either. At some points, Byatt just gives up and throws 'evidence' together randomly: the trouble is that the reader can thus see how little is actually going on. I was only (!) 15o pages from the end when I learned that this dull rambling comprised only one-quarter of a tetralogy, raising the prospect of another 1800 pages of such self-indulgent and unaware reflection.
At one point Byatt inadvertently sums up the entire project. 'Frederica thinks: there is not enough point to all this, or else I am missing something. It is a thought she is often to have, in those years'. Then having recognised this, why the other 617 pages? Even if they were necessary for Byatt's own satisfaction (although not apparently her clarification), it by no means requires the rest of us to have to wade through them with her.
Part of the problem is that the book is endlessly about writers writing about writing. (It's noticeable that all of the authors she cites/invokes throughout the book's parading of its own intellectual weight contrived to deal with problems of writing in the process of writing about something else). I differ with fans of Literary Fiction over whether this has any merit in and of itself, but Byatt's interminable Serious Ruminations are simultaneously wholly orthodox and staid, banal, and vapidly unresolved. She piles up the evidence, but the higher the pile the less she obviously has to say.
Perhaps the most revealing aspect of its abject failure on its own terms is its character as an extremely dull Historical Novel (a genre capable of even greater dullness than Literary Fiction, especially when performed as tediously and perfunctorily as the penultimate chapter here). I think we are supposed to view Frederica's course through the changing thought patterns of the 1960s as revelatory, but Byatt fails because she is never unflinching about the challenges to the previous orthodoxy. When portraying the artistic and moralistic provocateurs of the period (many of whom genuinely were silly and vacuous and legitimately deserving of ridicule) she's all too quick to resort to caricatures even lazier than the figures she's parodying. But before you suggest it, the thinking is so slovenly that these don't constitute acute satires.
More importantly, she does this because she is stacking the deck against these intellectual challenges in a quite transparent way. I was suckered into reading this by a thumbnail portrait of the Marquis de Sade on the dustjacket to the hardback (well, more fool me, so I have to accept total responsibility for the time I have wasted reading it), but the fictional novel that is prosecuted for obscenity in the book - Jude Mason's Babbletower - is entirely fraudulent as any kind of representation of Sade's gauntlet in the face of civilisation. Like every other bit of represented writing here, including Frederica's reluctant and unconvincing experimentation with Burroughs's cut-ups, Babbletower is striving to articulate only the most tiresomely hidebound moralising. Byatt's flirtation with the Moors Murders trial is peripheral and unengaged, as if she wants to make some cheap hostile comment but not really get at its core. So, in a prep-school matronly style, we are told that Brady read Sade, and Babbletower is compared with Sade in court, and that should be enough for anyone, so let's just go back to the storyline of Frederica's divorce, shall we?
Byatt can write, that is clear enough, but why? About 290 pages in I was wondering why I'd bothered. Another dozen pages and I was past halfway, so thought I might as well persist, but there is no fundamental unfolding of thought or argument beyond that point either. At some points, Byatt just gives up and throws 'evidence' together randomly: the trouble is that the reader can thus see how little is actually going on. I was only (!) 15o pages from the end when I learned that this dull rambling comprised only one-quarter of a tetralogy, raising the prospect of another 1800 pages of such self-indulgent and unaware reflection.
At one point Byatt inadvertently sums up the entire project. 'Frederica thinks: there is not enough point to all this, or else I am missing something. It is a thought she is often to have, in those years'. Then having recognised this, why the other 617 pages? Even if they were necessary for Byatt's own satisfaction (although not apparently her clarification), it by no means requires the rest of us to have to wade through them with her.
bookscatsyarn's review against another edition
3.0
For a book that made me want to lie down, and, alternatively, throw up, I ended up liking it a great deal. I did a lot of skimming of the "Babbeltower" sections; it seemed enough to have a general sense of what it was withought going into detail. What was compelling, much like Still Life, were the scenes of domesticity and Frederica's attempts to build a new life for herself and ultimately define and defend her sense of "motherhood." As the mother of a small boy, I think this was probably the right time in my life to read it; I can't imagine finding this compelling in graduate school
jason461's review against another edition
4.0
Longer than it should be, but with more than it's share of good moments.
slrsmith's review against another edition
2.0
The first half of this one was alright. Two narratives set in two different times but I was able to cope with that. In the second half the writing became more fragmented and I began to lose patience. I must admit I skipped huge sections of the "laminations". I'm sure there was some deep relevance there that I missed out on but ho hum. Life it too short.
I didn't give up entirely, so I guess it earned 2 stars for "it was ok". Disappointing.
I didn't give up entirely, so I guess it earned 2 stars for "it was ok". Disappointing.
kateratesbooks's review
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
"'I only get angry because I love you. You are here because I do love you, Frederica.' He has learned what a surprising number of men never learn, the strategic importance of those words... Much of what he says, Frederica has noticed without yet thinking about it, is dictated by the glaze of language that slides over and obscures the surface of the world he moves in, a language that is quite sure what certain things are... Language in this world is for keeping things safe in their places" (40-41)
A woman's husband, in a fit of anger, chases her and chucks an axe at her. She runs away, and her son wants to come with her, and so they flee. She was not allowed anything as a wife, and now she returns to her love of school and her friends. She loves academia, and becomes a professor. Her friends are all male. These all irritate her husband to no end.
He also denies he ever threw the axe. His family come to his defence.
This goes to court.
Frederica's friends are mostly male, though she mostly has platonic relationships with them. Some complications in terms of once, long ago, sleeping with each other and another who has a crush on her, but still. She's involved with this other guy, who, as it happens, was one of her students. But of course, all this is used as ammunition in court.
Behind all this, one of her friends, Jude Mason (a play on Hardy's Jude the Obscure) writes a book called Babbeltower that is under fire for basically being immoral. HIs publisher defends him vehemently. We see, if I understood it correctly, passages of this through the narrative; but for my first read, I wasn't reading this part too closely.
Babel Tower is for ANY WOMAN. Particularly any woman who has had to fight for her independence, fight to BE a woman.
I procrastinated writing this review because I don't have the words to due justice to how moved I was by this text, and how grateful I am to have found it and read it and to have it. Perhaps one day I will go through my tags in this book and annotate them in more detail, and then return to flesh out this review.
A woman's husband, in a fit of anger, chases her and chucks an axe at her. She runs away, and her son wants to come with her, and so they flee. She was not allowed anything as a wife, and now she returns to her love of school and her friends. She loves academia, and becomes a professor. Her friends are all male. These all irritate her husband to no end.
He also denies he ever threw the axe. His family come to his defence.
This goes to court.
Frederica's friends are mostly male, though she mostly has platonic relationships with them. Some complications in terms of once, long ago, sleeping with each other and another who has a crush on her, but still. She's involved with this other guy, who, as it happens, was one of her students. But of course, all this is used as ammunition in court.
Behind all this, one of her friends, Jude Mason (a play on Hardy's Jude the Obscure) writes a book called Babbeltower that is under fire for basically being immoral. HIs publisher defends him vehemently. We see, if I understood it correctly, passages of this through the narrative; but for my first read, I wasn't reading this part too closely.
Babel Tower is for ANY WOMAN. Particularly any woman who has had to fight for her independence, fight to BE a woman.
I procrastinated writing this review because I don't have the words to due justice to how moved I was by this text, and how grateful I am to have found it and read it and to have it. Perhaps one day I will go through my tags in this book and annotate them in more detail, and then return to flesh out this review.
bibliomaniac2021's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
informative
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75