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siria's review
5.0
[b: Babel Tower|91688|Babel Tower|A.S. Byatt|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|1063051] is an immensely pleasurable reading experience. Not because it's a particularly cheery book—god, it's not—but because it demands such intensity, such devotion of the reader and repays it all with interest. The intertextuality of it all is such a delight—books within books, Babbletower hidden within [b: Babel Tower|91688|Babel Tower|A.S. Byatt|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|1063051], the stories, the letters, the references to other novels—all giving rise to a level of introspection which feels organic rather than forced. Her characters are all incredibly vivid, even if I don't think I would particularly like to spend much time with any of them—Frederica is a little too much of a woman of her time—and really I do think that [a: A.S. Byatt|1169504|A.S. Byatt|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1388376297p2/1169504.jpg] is one of the most intelligent authors working today.
pbandgee's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
paulcowdell's review
1.0
It came as a genuine surprise to me that an author so self-consciously working on Big Ideas, including (and contained within) The Big Novel, should have laboured at such great length to produce such a staggeringly trivial and inconsequential book.
Part of the problem is that the book is endlessly about writers writing about writing. (It's noticeable that all of the authors she cites/invokes throughout the book's parading of its own intellectual weight contrived to deal with problems of writing in the process of writing about something else). I differ with fans of Literary Fiction over whether this has any merit in and of itself, but Byatt's interminable Serious Ruminations are simultaneously wholly orthodox and staid, banal, and vapidly unresolved. She piles up the evidence, but the higher the pile the less she obviously has to say.
Perhaps the most revealing aspect of its abject failure on its own terms is its character as an extremely dull Historical Novel (a genre capable of even greater dullness than Literary Fiction, especially when performed as tediously and perfunctorily as the penultimate chapter here). I think we are supposed to view Frederica's course through the changing thought patterns of the 1960s as revelatory, but Byatt fails because she is never unflinching about the challenges to the previous orthodoxy. When portraying the artistic and moralistic provocateurs of the period (many of whom genuinely were silly and vacuous and legitimately deserving of ridicule) she's all too quick to resort to caricatures even lazier than the figures she's parodying. But before you suggest it, the thinking is so slovenly that these don't constitute acute satires.
More importantly, she does this because she is stacking the deck against these intellectual challenges in a quite transparent way. I was suckered into reading this by a thumbnail portrait of the Marquis de Sade on the dustjacket to the hardback (well, more fool me, so I have to accept total responsibility for the time I have wasted reading it), but the fictional novel that is prosecuted for obscenity in the book - Jude Mason's Babbletower - is entirely fraudulent as any kind of representation of Sade's gauntlet in the face of civilisation. Like every other bit of represented writing here, including Frederica's reluctant and unconvincing experimentation with Burroughs's cut-ups, Babbletower is striving to articulate only the most tiresomely hidebound moralising. Byatt's flirtation with the Moors Murders trial is peripheral and unengaged, as if she wants to make some cheap hostile comment but not really get at its core. So, in a prep-school matronly style, we are told that Brady read Sade, and Babbletower is compared with Sade in court, and that should be enough for anyone, so let's just go back to the storyline of Frederica's divorce, shall we?
Byatt can write, that is clear enough, but why? About 290 pages in I was wondering why I'd bothered. Another dozen pages and I was past halfway, so thought I might as well persist, but there is no fundamental unfolding of thought or argument beyond that point either. At some points, Byatt just gives up and throws 'evidence' together randomly: the trouble is that the reader can thus see how little is actually going on. I was only (!) 15o pages from the end when I learned that this dull rambling comprised only one-quarter of a tetralogy, raising the prospect of another 1800 pages of such self-indulgent and unaware reflection.
At one point Byatt inadvertently sums up the entire project. 'Frederica thinks: there is not enough point to all this, or else I am missing something. It is a thought she is often to have, in those years'. Then having recognised this, why the other 617 pages? Even if they were necessary for Byatt's own satisfaction (although not apparently her clarification), it by no means requires the rest of us to have to wade through them with her.
Part of the problem is that the book is endlessly about writers writing about writing. (It's noticeable that all of the authors she cites/invokes throughout the book's parading of its own intellectual weight contrived to deal with problems of writing in the process of writing about something else). I differ with fans of Literary Fiction over whether this has any merit in and of itself, but Byatt's interminable Serious Ruminations are simultaneously wholly orthodox and staid, banal, and vapidly unresolved. She piles up the evidence, but the higher the pile the less she obviously has to say.
Perhaps the most revealing aspect of its abject failure on its own terms is its character as an extremely dull Historical Novel (a genre capable of even greater dullness than Literary Fiction, especially when performed as tediously and perfunctorily as the penultimate chapter here). I think we are supposed to view Frederica's course through the changing thought patterns of the 1960s as revelatory, but Byatt fails because she is never unflinching about the challenges to the previous orthodoxy. When portraying the artistic and moralistic provocateurs of the period (many of whom genuinely were silly and vacuous and legitimately deserving of ridicule) she's all too quick to resort to caricatures even lazier than the figures she's parodying. But before you suggest it, the thinking is so slovenly that these don't constitute acute satires.
More importantly, she does this because she is stacking the deck against these intellectual challenges in a quite transparent way. I was suckered into reading this by a thumbnail portrait of the Marquis de Sade on the dustjacket to the hardback (well, more fool me, so I have to accept total responsibility for the time I have wasted reading it), but the fictional novel that is prosecuted for obscenity in the book - Jude Mason's Babbletower - is entirely fraudulent as any kind of representation of Sade's gauntlet in the face of civilisation. Like every other bit of represented writing here, including Frederica's reluctant and unconvincing experimentation with Burroughs's cut-ups, Babbletower is striving to articulate only the most tiresomely hidebound moralising. Byatt's flirtation with the Moors Murders trial is peripheral and unengaged, as if she wants to make some cheap hostile comment but not really get at its core. So, in a prep-school matronly style, we are told that Brady read Sade, and Babbletower is compared with Sade in court, and that should be enough for anyone, so let's just go back to the storyline of Frederica's divorce, shall we?
Byatt can write, that is clear enough, but why? About 290 pages in I was wondering why I'd bothered. Another dozen pages and I was past halfway, so thought I might as well persist, but there is no fundamental unfolding of thought or argument beyond that point either. At some points, Byatt just gives up and throws 'evidence' together randomly: the trouble is that the reader can thus see how little is actually going on. I was only (!) 15o pages from the end when I learned that this dull rambling comprised only one-quarter of a tetralogy, raising the prospect of another 1800 pages of such self-indulgent and unaware reflection.
At one point Byatt inadvertently sums up the entire project. 'Frederica thinks: there is not enough point to all this, or else I am missing something. It is a thought she is often to have, in those years'. Then having recognised this, why the other 617 pages? Even if they were necessary for Byatt's own satisfaction (although not apparently her clarification), it by no means requires the rest of us to have to wade through them with her.
bookscatsyarn's review against another edition
3.0
For a book that made me want to lie down, and, alternatively, throw up, I ended up liking it a great deal. I did a lot of skimming of the "Babbeltower" sections; it seemed enough to have a general sense of what it was withought going into detail. What was compelling, much like Still Life, were the scenes of domesticity and Frederica's attempts to build a new life for herself and ultimately define and defend her sense of "motherhood." As the mother of a small boy, I think this was probably the right time in my life to read it; I can't imagine finding this compelling in graduate school
jason461's review against another edition
4.0
Longer than it should be, but with more than it's share of good moments.
slrsmith's review against another edition
2.0
The first half of this one was alright. Two narratives set in two different times but I was able to cope with that. In the second half the writing became more fragmented and I began to lose patience. I must admit I skipped huge sections of the "laminations". I'm sure there was some deep relevance there that I missed out on but ho hum. Life it too short.
I didn't give up entirely, so I guess it earned 2 stars for "it was ok". Disappointing.
I didn't give up entirely, so I guess it earned 2 stars for "it was ok". Disappointing.
marathonreader's review
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
"'I only get angry because I love you. You are here because I do love you, Frederica.' He has learned what a surprising number of men never learn, the strategic importance of those words... Much of what he says, Frederica has noticed without yet thinking about it, is dictated by the glaze of language that slides over and obscures the surface of the world he moves in, a language that is quite sure what certain things are... Language in this world is for keeping things safe in their places" (40-41)
A woman's husband, in a fit of anger, chases her and chucks an axe at her. She runs away, and her son wants to come with her, and so they flee. She was not allowed anything as a wife, and now she returns to her love of school and her friends. She loves academia, and becomes a professor. Her friends are all male. These all irritate her husband to no end.
He also denies he ever threw the axe. His family come to his defence.
This goes to court.
Frederica's friends are mostly male, though she mostly has platonic relationships with them. Some complications in terms of once, long ago, sleeping with each other and another who has a crush on her, but still. She's involved with this other guy, who, as it happens, was one of her students. But of course, all this is used as ammunition in court.
Behind all this, one of her friends, Jude Mason (a play on Hardy's Jude the Obscure) writes a book called Babbeltower that is under fire for basically being immoral. HIs publisher defends him vehemently. We see, if I understood it correctly, passages of this through the narrative; but for my first read, I wasn't reading this part too closely.
Babel Tower is for ANY WOMAN. Particularly any woman who has had to fight for her independence, fight to BE a woman.
I procrastinated writing this review because I don't have the words to due justice to how moved I was by this text, and how grateful I am to have found it and read it and to have it. Perhaps one day I will go through my tags in this book and annotate them in more detail, and then return to flesh out this review.
A woman's husband, in a fit of anger, chases her and chucks an axe at her. She runs away, and her son wants to come with her, and so they flee. She was not allowed anything as a wife, and now she returns to her love of school and her friends. She loves academia, and becomes a professor. Her friends are all male. These all irritate her husband to no end.
He also denies he ever threw the axe. His family come to his defence.
This goes to court.
Frederica's friends are mostly male, though she mostly has platonic relationships with them. Some complications in terms of once, long ago, sleeping with each other and another who has a crush on her, but still. She's involved with this other guy, who, as it happens, was one of her students. But of course, all this is used as ammunition in court.
Behind all this, one of her friends, Jude Mason (a play on Hardy's Jude the Obscure) writes a book called Babbeltower that is under fire for basically being immoral. HIs publisher defends him vehemently. We see, if I understood it correctly, passages of this through the narrative; but for my first read, I wasn't reading this part too closely.
Babel Tower is for ANY WOMAN. Particularly any woman who has had to fight for her independence, fight to BE a woman.
I procrastinated writing this review because I don't have the words to due justice to how moved I was by this text, and how grateful I am to have found it and read it and to have it. Perhaps one day I will go through my tags in this book and annotate them in more detail, and then return to flesh out this review.
bibliomaniac2021's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
informative
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
mrblackbean11's review against another edition
2.0
Honestly, I don't have a very high opinion of this book, but I think a good part of that derives from the fact that I felt like I missed the point to this book. Babel Tower seemed unduly long to me (by about 400 pages), with quotations from other books and trivial conversations filling up the bulk of the book. It also is written, in my opinion, incongruously, the storyline fluctuating rapidly and character's actions unjustified. For example, it irked me that in Frederica's trial that the fact that Nigel assaulted her father and her brother in law was largely disregarded (it was mentioned once) and instead the court focused on the hearsay evidence about Nigel throwing an axe at Frederica. Why wasn't her family in court defending her? Why wasn't the instance when Nigel came to her family's home and called her a bitch mentioned? Nigel is allowed 3 witness who clearly would never side against him, while Frederica has no one (but her family is 'supportive' of her). It makes no sense, and I chalk it up to a flaw in the author to present a fictional reality as she saw fit, rather than a work of fiction based in reality.
The story line itself had potential, Frederica is the epitome of a 'modern' woman in the late 1960s, well educated, career driven, and sexually free, and after filing for divorce with her husband, she demands custody of her child, who it is questionable how much she loves him and would actually provide a good home at times. There are definitely two sides of the coin: Nigel, a violent and unstable wealthy man, could provide Leo (their son) with a stable and loving environment between him and his three stables. However, Nigel is gone for long stretches of time, and as I mentioned before, he is of a violent nature, prone to temper tantrums, and would use Leo as bait to bring Frederica back.
Yet, Frederica, although emotionally stable and affectionate towards Leo, is barely financially stable and has questionable morals (it isn't a stable environment for a child if you are sleeping with different men based on your mood). I wouldn't want Leo to live with either of them, honestly, but if I had to choose, I would probably choose Frederica just on the premise that she lives with Agatha and Saskia, who are a stable and happy mother daughter pair and would provide a positive influence for Leo.
The book also goes into another subplot about a controversial book published at the same time. Honestly, I didn't follow that plot line as well because it seemed to just be 'added' on later in the book to add more excitement.
I honestly wouldn't recommend this book to people who follow my literary tastes. I guess if you like books about human emotions (and not necessarily their veracity) and drama, this might be a good read for you.
The story line itself had potential, Frederica is the epitome of a 'modern' woman in the late 1960s, well educated, career driven, and sexually free, and after filing for divorce with her husband, she demands custody of her child, who it is questionable how much she loves him and would actually provide a good home at times. There are definitely two sides of the coin: Nigel, a violent and unstable wealthy man, could provide Leo (their son) with a stable and loving environment between him and his three stables. However, Nigel is gone for long stretches of time, and as I mentioned before, he is of a violent nature, prone to temper tantrums, and would use Leo as bait to bring Frederica back.
Yet, Frederica, although emotionally stable and affectionate towards Leo, is barely financially stable and has questionable morals (it isn't a stable environment for a child if you are sleeping with different men based on your mood). I wouldn't want Leo to live with either of them, honestly, but if I had to choose, I would probably choose Frederica just on the premise that she lives with Agatha and Saskia, who are a stable and happy mother daughter pair and would provide a positive influence for Leo.
The book also goes into another subplot about a controversial book published at the same time. Honestly, I didn't follow that plot line as well because it seemed to just be 'added' on later in the book to add more excitement.
I honestly wouldn't recommend this book to people who follow my literary tastes. I guess if you like books about human emotions (and not necessarily their veracity) and drama, this might be a good read for you.
qofdnz's review against another edition
3.0
My bad for reading this knowing it is book 3 in a series of which I have not read the other books. Despite that I get the feeling I would never like Frederica. She is not likeable in this book. Possibly Leo is the only pleasant character. The book dragged on overly long and the court section towards the end could not hold my interest. I'm glad it's over. No more AS Byatt for me.