A review by mepresley
The Biographer's Tale by A.S. Byatt

adventurous challenging informative reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I can't say that I particularly enjoyed this book, though it is in many ways a brilliant reflection on post-structuralist theory and the death of the author, and on the relationship between biography and fiction and fact. Reading The Biographer's Tale will teach you a fair amount about Linnaeus, Galton, Ibsen, and bee taxonomy. 

Fulla was an amazing character. Puck's Girdle was fabulous. I also don't deny relating to Phineas--to a growing disenchantment with scholarship, a dawning epiphany that in many ways it is neither 'real' nor useful, to the discovery of how to live in the "real" world and find pleasure there, when previously those experiences were mediated through books, through reading. 

I really liked Byatt's decision to

frustrate Phineas' attempts to learn anything about Destry-Scholes or solve the riddle of Destry-Scholes' project, and also her refusal to do the typical closure for a novel by having Phineas choose between Vera and Fulla.