Book Review: The Children’s Book

I tend to the maddeningly curious.  I ask too many questions, walk too close to the ledge to see where the water goes, read terrifying accounts to understand what occurred, and act in the name of experience.   There is so much to learn; one tantalizing aspect of eternity is the chance to gorge myself endlessly on black holes and botany, Victorian manners and the intrigues of the Louis XIV court, biographies of bon vivants and the histories of old houses.   I’m going to find myself a comfortable hillside under a shady tree, bring a basket of apples and my best pals T.S. Eliot, Queen Elizabeth I, Oscar Wilde, and Coco Chanel and read and chat for at least a millenia.  We will have the cool kids’ hillside.  Don’t worry, you can totally sit with us.  I will be the one perched on a pile of 10,000 books.   Oh and guys! I might finally read all of the New Yorkers lying around the apartment!

Ahem.  Now I am getting hysterical.

UK Cover

But seriously, is there anything better than the frisson of an “a-ha!” moment, the satisfaction of a nagging need to know?  At a recent reading*, when asked how she knew so much, A.S. Byatt responded that she is terribly curious and, as a result, reads everything she can get her hands on.

I was charmed by the answer, and it articulated why I enjoy Byatt’s work:  she is a voracious researcher and seamlessly threads fact with fiction.   I keep a notebook nearby when I read her books because there are always topics I want to delve into deeper; she reveals the forgotten charms of trends and times past.  I love it, but it can make her books a little daunting.  Cursory knowledge doesn’t have a place in her books, and she has been criticized for sometimes letting research overpower her story. 

The Children’s Book opens in 1895 and covers the Todesfright Wellwoods and their friends as they grapple with social reform and the chasm between the creative life and reality.   At the center of the novel is the battle between responsibility and creativity, and of the unspoken disconnect between realities created and reality as it is.  Of Olive Wellwood, the matriarch and, as a successful children’s author, the main breadwinner for the Wellwoods, Byatt writes “(She knew) the unborn child did not really float in blood – but blood went to it, her blood, down a livid rope that could give life, or could strangle.  These things were not spoken of, or written about.  They were therefore more real, and more unreal, intensely, simultaneously.”

Nowhere is this tension more apparent than in the work of the two adult artists in the novel:  Olive Wellwood and the tortured, gifted potter Benedict Fludd.  Both have pursued their art at the expense of their families and both have created explicit replicas of their children that, in their creation, have forever alienated and inextricably tied their children to them.  Throughout the book secrets are partially revealed and it is the children, the literal creations of the adults, who bear the responsibility.   Secrets are revealed and new secrets kept simultaneously; family life (and society) contracts and fractures simultaneously.  We see the years leading up to World War I as idyllic and golden, but also tenuous and troubled.  The War is the final adult creation that kills the children in the book; its aftermath both a rebirth and a warning.

US Cover ****

This is not a perfect novel.  Byatt is best when she weaves her historic research into the narrative like she does in the scenes at the Grande Exposition, in Paris.  Other sections, where she uses historic events to push past intervening years in the narrative, carry the familiar sense of the smartest overachiever in the class trying to use every last one of her research notecards. 

But this is a very good novel.  Excellent, in fact.  I actually looked forward to taking the subway every morning and evening because it meant I could read.**   The story is fantastic and the characters are very well tuned.  Byatt always writes strong, complicated women but in this novel the men were just as interesting as the women.   And then there are the details:  I salivate just thinking of her descriptions of Lalique and Rodin, and her history of the Victoria and Albert Museum sealed its place as one of my all-time favourite haunts.  If you are interested in Art Nouveau, puppets***, William Morris, the British Women’s Lib movement, decorative arts, fashion and, especially, fairy tales, you will love, LOVE this book.  I already can’t wait to re-read it.

Come to think of it, let’s add A.S. Byatt to my hillside.  She’ll keep Coco from getting too smug.

Yell Softly Rating: 4 out of 5 yells

The Children’s Book

A.S. Byatt

688 pages

*If you ever get a chance to go to an author reading, take it!  Seriously.  99% of the time they’re fascinating, inexpensive, and completely inspiring.  The other 1%. . . well, sometimes there’s free wine and cheese so that more than makes up for the odds.

**You should know this about me:  I really hate taking the subway.   I will create any excuse to take a cab home.  Yes, I know that the train is actually faster.  I don’t care.   That Byatt created a novel that made the commute not only agreeable but anticipated has not only increased my love for her, but the size of my bank balance as well. 

*** I didn’t realize how interested I was in puppetry until I read this book – it makes me love the Royal De Luxe street theater even more.

**** Why are UK covers always so much more intricate?  Has anyone else noticed this?  I’ll be the first to admit that given the choice between slightly gaudy and plain I will ALWAY opt of slightly (or totally) gaudy.  What do you think? I like the larger dragonfly and the curlicues.   (I may still be nursing a grudge that I am stuck with the plain Jane tan cover of Zadie Smith’s On Beauty while the UK cover was lush and gorgeous and yes! I KNOW that was almost 4 years ago.  But it’s still not fair.)