A review by diezalex
Possession by A.S. Byatt

3.0

The book is very well written and researched and it is obvious that Byatt knows a lot about literature as is clearly shown in the many references to works, authors and themes that are studied in any English Literature course, as well as in the many types of writing that she uses that sound totally credible, but, does it need to be so bloody long? Many accuse this book of being pretentious and I think I partly agree. All the poems, stories, and letters show Byatt's mastery of the technique of writing, but I think the art of writing is also knowing how to tell more by telling less. So, I don't dispute the quality of any single piece of writing included in the novel, but for me, half of them do not add anything to the story, or not enough to make them worthwhile, and just make it more tedious. In fact, at first, I was going to give it 4 stars because of the mastery of the subject and the technique but after a certain point I started getting bored and I just wanted to finish. It is because of that felling of tediousness that I am only giving it 3 stars.