- Hardcover: 688 pages
- Publisher: Knopf (2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0307272095
- ISBN-13: 978-0307272096
- Product Dimensions: 16.9 x 4.1 x 24.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 998 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
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Most helpful customer reviews
36 of 38 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
It left me wanting more and less,
By
This review is from: The Children's Book (Hardcover)
The writer honoured this year at the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival in Montreal was A.S. Byatt, and she launched her latest novel there. Other people compared this novel to Possession, Byatt's best known novel. I liked this novel, but I don't think it will be the best I read this year. It is a sprawling story spanning the years from 1895 to the end of World War I. Also there is a large cast of characters, including Olive Wellwood, a children's writer, who writes personal books for each of her seven children. The families of the children's cousins and friends are also part of the story, and as the children grow up, they start to get individual plotlines. However, at times Byatt starts to describe an incident involving one character but the story never seems to be completed because there are so many characters to keep track of. I would have been happy following the large group of fictional characters, but Byatt has done so much research on the Edwardian era, that she feels the need to include all sorts of historical characters as well. At one point I was unsure whether one historical character, who seemed to pop up quite often, was actually one of her inventions.There are many fascinating stories here, but because I didn't get to follow all of the stories to their end, I had the feeling that I wanted more from a 615-page book that took me three weeks to complete. Byatt is an excellent writer and The Children's Book is a better novel than most that I will read this year, but because it is good, I wanted it to be better.
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting but ultimately disappointing,
By bookworm "cassandra44" (Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Children's Book (Hardcover)
I had high hopes for the latest Byatt novel and sat down to enjoy this very long novel but I have to say that I found it disappointing.There are simply far too many characters in the novel and the author picks them up and lays them down without any sustained development which might hold the reader's interest. I think she bit off far too much and in the end crammed far too much into the novel - even venturing into WWI very cursorily. It all felt very rushed towards the end. At the same time Byatt lingers lovingly over minute details of a vase or piece of sculpture which, although interesting initially, over the course of the novel becomes quite irritating. She seems more comfortable working in miniature and much less comfortable with managing the grand sweep of the narrative structure. She is such a master of language that I was surprised to discover repetitive use of adjectives in the same sentence. I think a good editor should have corrected some of the more obvious and annoying repetitions. Although my review seems negative I would still recommend the novel even though it did not fully live up to my expectations. Such a pity though that Byatt crammed all this material into one novel.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
`An illusion is a complicated thing, and an audience is a complicated creature.',
By J. Cameron-Smith "Expect the Unexpected" (ACT, Australia) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Children's Book (Paperback)
This novel is set in late Victorian and Edwardian England (between June 1895 and May 1919) and involves the interconnected stories of three families: the Wellwoods, the Fludds, and the Cains. The novel begins when two boys find a third boy (Philip Warren) hiding in the cellar of the South Kensington Museum. It is Philip's story, including his quest to become a great potter, which anchors the novel.Art is important to each of the three families. Prosper Cain is Special Keeper of Precious Metals at the South Kensington Museum. Benedict Fludd, Cain's friend, is a potter of volatile temperament who destroys his own work at times. Olive Wellwood writes children's stories, inspired in part by her own large family. There is a tension between the positive and negative impacts of creativity - sometimes obvious (as in Fludd's destruction of his pottery) and sometimes far more subtle (Wellwood's impact on her family). It's tempting to see parallels between the changing roles of family members (especially Benedict Fludd and Olive Wellwood) and the changing shape of the society in which they live as the creativity of the late 19th and early 20th centuries gives way to war. At times I found the novel complicated: the intertwining of stories and the number of characters made it challenging. I did not find it an easy novel to read but it was ultimately both enriching and rewarding. `She thought of marching forwards and retreated.' Jennifer Cameron-Smith
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