Book of the Week: "The Children's Book."

Anyone remember the pleasure of reading Possession, the literary thriller and romance by A.S. Byatt? She has a new novel, The Children’s Book, in the same genre that she has dubbed postmodern-Victorian. The book centers on Olive Wellwood, a children’s book author saved from poverty by her rich and philandering husband. Byatt has an amazing ability to colonize the minds of her characters; some would say it’s her flaw. The book follows the family through various tragedies, global and personal, and winds down in a soap-operatic way. It takes some indulgence to follow all of her historical digressions and stock characters, but well worth it. Lately I have been dreaming about Tom, the favored and tragic eldest Wellwood son. DoubleX will devote its podcast to the book next week. Come and listen!

Tags: A.S. Byatt, Children's Book

Hanna Rosin Double X co- editor, reporter, prefer my friends live.

Comments

Keep reading!

By: Hanna Rosin | Sun, 10/18/2009 - 21:59

Podcast is delayed a couple of weeks, so you still have time. It will air in 2 weeks

next week? really?

By: duckiedumonde | Sun, 10/18/2009 - 17:07

I would have loved to read this in time for the discussion--but not with a Byatt book at a week's notice. Any way y'all could give your readers a little more heads up in the future?

byatt

By: Vville222 | Sat, 10/17/2009 - 16:07

Looking forward to your discussion - Byatt is such a wonderful writer! Her cerebral quality fits nicely with my own psyche, more so than Margaret Drabble's style, which is also wonderful. Can you imagine having so much talent in one family?!

There was a very mediocre interview with her recently by Susan Page on the Diane Rehm show, one of the few times I wished a NPR host had done a little more homework before the interview. Still, Byatt did manage to get in a few interesting thoughts about the creative process.