Ok, this is not for me. 70 odd pages and no hint of a plot, just a lot of scene setting and Victorian historical information. I get that this is likely to be character or society study rather than a plot-driven novel, which is fair enough, but I'm not digging the writing. There is a lot of info...
A densely woven account of connected families growing and changing over the late Victorian period up until the end of WWI. Byatt centres her narrative on the lives of the children, following their development and emotional perspectives. The book is openly aestheticising at the expense of pure realis...
I'm not terribly good at keeping many characters straight in books but once they actually start doing something I usually manage to remember who is who. While reading this book, 100 pages from the end, I had to flip back and re-read the garden party scene near the beginning where everybody is introd...
This book was very well written, and the characters were mostly complex and interesting. I enjoyed reading it for the most part. My problem was that every chapter or so, Byatt would take a break from the story to give a history lesson. Yes, the characters and narrative were often influenced by the ...
This really is a good book, you know. Oh, and by the way, it's called "The Children's Book", but it isn't a children's book. It is very well written, bursting with information, full of vivid images, fascinating, impressive, at times even moving.But.Well, everyone knew there's going to be a but.I'm t...
In conclusion, this is how books of historical fiction should be written. History is interwoven into the story and made fascinating. There is so very much history in this book, so if that makes you leery, choose another book. As stated below you follow a few families from 1895 through the First Worl...
I have read two other novels by Byatt, and I was excited about this one. It's about the Victorian era, and who doesn't love the Victorian era? It features a young, poor, but very talented potter who is discovered living in the back rooms of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and an older woman who is a...
I really wanted to give this book more than 3 stars. I really did. It reminds me at once of Tolstoy (which is a great compliment as I feel that Tolstoy is one of the better unrecognized sociological minds of the 1800s) and F. Scott Fitzgerald. These characters are complex with interesting relation...
I don’t even know where to begin to describe this book. It’s a meandering and in many ways epic story of a number of interconnected English and German families from about 1890 through the first World War. There are a large number of characters and Byatt dips in and out of their lives in a seemingl...
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