Possession is not only the incredibly apt title but also the way I feel about this book. While reading it I hesitated to tell my friends about the wonderful new book that had me so enthralled. I felt as though I was with Maud and Roland while they tromped over Europe. I became as possessive about the letters as the fictitious characters themselves. The book became my three day obsession.

I have read every other review about it and I won't lie and say that the prose wasn't stilted at times. It was. The story is certainly easily transparent and I had guessed the ending of the book 175 pages before it happened.

But all of that is superfluous. I have not read a book comparable to this one in regards to pure creativity for quite some time. I admired the ingenuity of Ms. Byatt with every turn of the page. She not only created believable characters, but she created a literary history that spanned nearly two hundred years. From nothing Ms. Byatt created distinctively different poetry in the voice of two, fictitious, Victorian poets. She also created love letters between the two. She created fictitious literary analyses of the fictitious poetry. For that feat alone, I admire her and this book.

And I would read it all over again, twenty times, for the simple post script which, I feel, summed up the book better than anything I could've ever imagined.

I adored this book. Some reviews I've read have commented on the fact that the book is rich with description, sometimes more so than information and I do not find that a fault. I read books to entertain myself, if this book was simply a cut-and-dried medical text (and I've read my share of those) then I would've simply read it, processed it and discarded it. Because Mr. Preston gave us more than dry scientific information, this book became one of my all-time favorites. This book, to me, marries the art of masterful storytelling and conveying information. A must-read for anyone interested in the sciences or in a good thriller.