Book Review: THE ARCHIVIST, by Martha Cooley

About this book I felt rather ambivalent. I'm not sure why. I bought THE ARCHIVIST based solely on the cover (rad) and the price (dirt cheap). Halfway through first chapter, however, I was ready to set the book down and back away. It was boring, I thought. I didn't care much for the characters, and it reminded me of an inferior version of Possession--all literary and scholarly, but without the pretty writing or interesting plot.

So I did that age-old test to determine whether or not I should keep reading: I put the book down and asked myself a little while later if I was hooked--did I think about the book? Did I want to know what happened?

I did. So I went back to THE ARCHIVIST and read the whole damn thing.

And reluctantly, I was sucked in. I cannot explain it, but I ended up plowing through the book in a day or two, trying to figure out the entire time what it was about the book that kept me coming back.

I never did put my finger on it.

Did I like it? I don't know. Would I recommend it to you? I'm really not sure. Was it any good at all? I think so, but I don't know why. And while all this sounds like the criteria for a rating of 2, something keeps nagging me to give it a 3. But why? Pfff.

RATING: 3

Book Review: POSSESSION, by A.S. Byatt

Somebody asked me once if I'd read this book, and when I said no, they said it seemed like something I would read. I cannot for the life of me remember who said this. If it was you, please put my mind at ease and tell me.

I'm a complete sucker for recommendations, at any rate, so at the recommendation of this Mystery Person, I bought POSSESSION and I read it. And I enjoyed it, very much.

It's no wonder that Byatt won a Booker Prize for POSSESSION: part suspense, part romance (not that kind of romance), and two or three parts literature, Byatt's novel follows young Roland Michel, a scholar on the fictional late nineteenth century poet, Randolph Henry Ash, as he accidentally discovers two as yet unseen letters of Ash's in a library book. The letters set Michel on the trail of the unknown woman to whom Ash was writing and, with the help of another scholar, Maud Bailey, he uncovers a story that blah blah blah.

I'm sorry. My summary is so terribly insufficient.

When written up like that, POSSESSION sounds like nothing more than a stock thriller plot, with a little history and poetry mixed in. Forgive me. It is so much more.

Byatt's writing is incredible--whether you like them or not, her sentences are impressive, long and lovely, the words and images she chooses wildly beautiful--and her sense of structure is magnificent. This is the sort of book that begs to be examined in college literature classes--I couldn't help but notice certain themes running through the story (the word "possession", in every possible sense, being one of them), and the way Byatt wove in bits of poetry by her fictional poets, or entire journals written by various characters, and yet kept the voices of each character, whether writing or speaking, perfectly clear, added many, many more layers to a story that was already rich and glowing.

I liked it. I really did. For you Victorian literature buffs, this is a great mix of contemporary and classic literature, complete with epic poems and scenes set in Victorian England. Postively lovely.

RATING: 4