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Product Description
Review
“May well be her masterpiece…. The kind of novel that can remind us why we fell in love with books and literature in the first place.”
— The Gazette
“Proves yet again what a force she is…. Remarkable, peerless, and wilfully and delightfully and unapologetically intellectual, the kind of writer who makes you marvel at what she manages to put on the page.”
— The Herald
“Byatt’s novel combines meaty ideas with the breathless page-turning propulsion of an old-fashioned saga…. Brimming with intelligence and sensuality, this is the perfect summer book.”
— Metro UK (Book of the Week)
“This book made me thirsty: Whenever I put it down, it nagged me to pick it up again…. Monumental, pure, beautiful…. After more than 40 years of writing, Byatt can still breathe magical life into historical fiction, giving her abiding interests new relevance with each work.”
— The Globe and Mail
“The Children’s Book is a consummate work of art.”
—Scotland on Sunday
“Easily the best book Byatt has written since the Booker-winning Possession.”
— The Sunday Times
“Magnificent loquacity…. Gripping and often deeply affecting.”
— Literary Review
“Compulsively readable…. This extraordinarily rich book is superbly embedded in the thoughts and beliefs and feelings of the period — and indeed in its interior décor.”
— The Spectator
“You can count on A.S. Byatt to produce an engrossing saga.”
— Tatler
“Enlightenment and social promotion and political advance in all its forms.”
— New Statesman
“Has a richness of a pictorial décor which reminds one of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence.”
— Evening Standard
“Like Possession, it carries off the feat of being both a dazzling novel of ideas and an emotionally compelling page-turner, a historical work with a remarkably contemporary feel. One of our best writers has surpassed herself.”
— The Gazette
“The Children’s Book is a work that superlatively displays both enormous reach and tremendous grip…. Intellectual zest keeps the book sizzling with ideas. But it is alive with imaginative energy; too.”
— The Sunday Times
“An indefatigable storyteller…. never less than the real thing.”
— The Irish Times
“The sort of high concept rarefied intellectual fiction we’d expect from, well, A.S. Byatt. Possession: the next generation.”
— The Financial Times
From the Hardcover edition.
— The Gazette
“Proves yet again what a force she is…. Remarkable, peerless, and wilfully and delightfully and unapologetically intellectual, the kind of writer who makes you marvel at what she manages to put on the page.”
— The Herald
“Byatt’s novel combines meaty ideas with the breathless page-turning propulsion of an old-fashioned saga…. Brimming with intelligence and sensuality, this is the perfect summer book.”
— Metro UK (Book of the Week)
“This book made me thirsty: Whenever I put it down, it nagged me to pick it up again…. Monumental, pure, beautiful…. After more than 40 years of writing, Byatt can still breathe magical life into historical fiction, giving her abiding interests new relevance with each work.”
— The Globe and Mail
“The Children’s Book is a consummate work of art.”
—Scotland on Sunday
“Easily the best book Byatt has written since the Booker-winning Possession.”
— The Sunday Times
“Magnificent loquacity…. Gripping and often deeply affecting.”
— Literary Review
“Compulsively readable…. This extraordinarily rich book is superbly embedded in the thoughts and beliefs and feelings of the period — and indeed in its interior décor.”
— The Spectator
“You can count on A.S. Byatt to produce an engrossing saga.”
— Tatler
“Enlightenment and social promotion and political advance in all its forms.”
— New Statesman
“Has a richness of a pictorial décor which reminds one of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence.”
— Evening Standard
“Like Possession, it carries off the feat of being both a dazzling novel of ideas and an emotionally compelling page-turner, a historical work with a remarkably contemporary feel. One of our best writers has surpassed herself.”
— The Gazette
“The Children’s Book is a work that superlatively displays both enormous reach and tremendous grip…. Intellectual zest keeps the book sizzling with ideas. But it is alive with imaginative energy; too.”
— The Sunday Times
“An indefatigable storyteller…. never less than the real thing.”
— The Irish Times
“The sort of high concept rarefied intellectual fiction we’d expect from, well, A.S. Byatt. Possession: the next generation.”
— The Financial Times
From the Hardcover edition.
Product Description
From the renowned author of Possession, The Children’s Book is the absorbing story of the close of what has been called the Edwardian summer: the deceptively languid, blissful period that ended with the cataclysmic destruction of World War I. In this compelling novel, A.S. Byatt summons up a whole era, revealing that beneath its golden surface lay tensions that would explode into war, revolution and unbelievable change — for the generation that came of age before 1914 and, most of all, for their children.
The novel centres around Olive Wellwood, a fairy tale writer, and her circle, which includes the brilliant, erratic craftsman Benedict Fludd and his apprentice Phillip Warren, a runaway from the poverty of the Potteries; Prosper Cain, the soldier who directs what will become the Victoria and Albert Museum; Olive’s brother-in-law Basil Wellwood, an officer of the Bank of England; and many others from every layer of society. A.S. Byatt traces their lives in intimate detail and moves between generations, following the children who must choose whether to follow the roles expected of them or stand up to their parents’ “porcelain socialism.”
Olive’s daughter Dorothy wishes to become a doctor, while her other daughter, Hedda, wants to fight for votes for women. Her son Tom, sent to an upper-class school, wants nothing more than to spend time in the woods, tracking birds and foxes. Her nephew Charles becomes embroiled with German-influenced revolutionaries. Their portraits connect the political issues at the heart of nascent feminism and socialism with grave personal dilemmas, interlacing until The Children’s Book becomes a perfect depiction of an entire world.
Olive is a fairy tale writer in the era of Peter Pan and Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind In the Willows, not long after Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. At a time when children in England suffered deprivation by the millions, the concept of childhood was being refined and elaborated in ways that still influence us today. For each of her children, Olive writes a special, private book, bound in a different colour and placed on a shelf; when these same children are ferried off into the unremitting destruction of the Great War, the reader is left to wonder who the real children in this novel are.
The Children’s Book is an astonishing novel. It is an historical feat that brings to life an era that helped shape our own as well as a gripping, personal novel about parents and children, life’s most painful struggles and its richest pleasures. No other writer could have imagined it or created it.
From the Hardcover edition.
The novel centres around Olive Wellwood, a fairy tale writer, and her circle, which includes the brilliant, erratic craftsman Benedict Fludd and his apprentice Phillip Warren, a runaway from the poverty of the Potteries; Prosper Cain, the soldier who directs what will become the Victoria and Albert Museum; Olive’s brother-in-law Basil Wellwood, an officer of the Bank of England; and many others from every layer of society. A.S. Byatt traces their lives in intimate detail and moves between generations, following the children who must choose whether to follow the roles expected of them or stand up to their parents’ “porcelain socialism.”
Olive’s daughter Dorothy wishes to become a doctor, while her other daughter, Hedda, wants to fight for votes for women. Her son Tom, sent to an upper-class school, wants nothing more than to spend time in the woods, tracking birds and foxes. Her nephew Charles becomes embroiled with German-influenced revolutionaries. Their portraits connect the political issues at the heart of nascent feminism and socialism with grave personal dilemmas, interlacing until The Children’s Book becomes a perfect depiction of an entire world.
Olive is a fairy tale writer in the era of Peter Pan and Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind In the Willows, not long after Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. At a time when children in England suffered deprivation by the millions, the concept of childhood was being refined and elaborated in ways that still influence us today. For each of her children, Olive writes a special, private book, bound in a different colour and placed on a shelf; when these same children are ferried off into the unremitting destruction of the Great War, the reader is left to wonder who the real children in this novel are.
The Children’s Book is an astonishing novel. It is an historical feat that brings to life an era that helped shape our own as well as a gripping, personal novel about parents and children, life’s most painful struggles and its richest pleasures. No other writer could have imagined it or created it.
From the Hardcover edition.
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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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