Unravelling the Metafiction of A.S. Byatt’s ‘Possession’ – Wordy Witterings

Recommended for: literary scholars, poetry fans, those who enjoy novels with a slower pace.

I’ve had this book on my TBR list for years now. It won the Booker Prize in 1990, featured in the BBC survey ‘The Big Read’ which I’ve been ticking off over the year, and it often appears in lists of ‘must-read’ books. At 555 pages, it’s far from a quick read, and I’d been saving it until I had the time to give it the time it deserves.

Despite my anticipation, I didn’t always find this an easy, or even enjoyable read. There are huge sections where very little happens, it lacks the plot points that make it anything like a page-turner, and the narrative often seems to circle around itself rather than progressing forwards. The novel is, however, beautifully written and I can absolutely see why it won the Booker. It fits most comfortably into the genre of metafiction (historiographic metafiction if you wish to be a pedant), and if you’ve ever read literary academia, you’ll find plenty of its features at play here.

Byatt’s critical work includes studies of Iris Murdoch’s writing, and you can see both Murdoch’s influence and a scholarly approach, in so many passages of this novel. At times, I found these somewhat self-indulgent and unnecessarily academic. However, this may be Byatt’s point: that biographies and historical records can never capture the entire truth. That we can never have the true picture without being a participant ourselves, and that we may, even then, have our own truth.

The semi-epistolary form of the novel comprises of narrative, poetry, journals and letters. I’ve read many reviews where others report skipping over the poetry of the fictional Victorians, Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte. I’d advise you not to – I thought that they were rather good, and reminiscent of Eliot and Tennyson. These poems act as much more than just ‘fillers’ in the book, shaping the reader’s perspective and adding much depth to the characters in equal quantities to the letters. Without them, the unique flavour of the novel would surely be lost.

This is a slow burn of a novel. It’s pace is not dissimilar to a Victorian pastoral romance where setting, inner struggles and society’s views are more prominent than the romance itself. It’s heavily character-driven, and the multiple generations of scholars can be a little confusing at times, as there are deliberate parallels between so many of them. However, the novel culminates in a rather dramatic climax set against the backdrop of the Great Storm of 1987, and the resolution is so satisfactory as to make the hours of apparent circling and mirroring a worthwhile investment. If I were to compare it to another novel, it would be ‘Oscar and Lucinda’ by Peter Carey: the ending being so illuminating that I want to read the whole novel again with it in my possession. Maybe this is the final example of ‘possession’ in the novel – the gift to the reader of the key to unlocking the whole novel.

I’m still not sure what my final thoughts are about ‘Possession’. I feel that whilst it thoroughly deserves to have won the Booker Prize, and stands up as a piece of outstanding literary fiction, it still isn’t 100% for me due to the huge sections were little happens. I guess that it depends what you’re looking for in a novel – a page-turning read or a masterclass in metafiction.

If you’ve read ‘Possession’ yourself, I’d love to hear your thoughts!