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A review by mepresley
Babel Tower by A.S. Byatt
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
While there are parts of the novel that I enjoyed very much, and while I appreciated its experimentation, overall I did not think that it held together or provided any kind of narrative satisfaction. The main story does have a beginning, middle, and end: Frederica is in an abusive marriage, Frederica flees that marriage, and Frederica is granted a divorce--though the finding is actually in favor of her husband's counter-suit--and custody of their son; also, Frederica appears to reconcile with the super-weird John Ottakar. The side-story of the legal case of Babbletower also has its ending: the publisher and Jude lose the original obscenity trial but win on appeal.
However, the various threads reach no conclusion: we see bits and pieces of Frederica's Laminations, but not its conclusion; we hear parts of Agatha's adventure story but not the end; we read large chunks of Babbletower but not the meat of it, and the novel bizarrely ends with the conclusion of Babbletower, clearly far removed from the last segment of the text we were given. I do think Byatt captured the mood of the 1960s and the novel is situated firmly within real socio-historical events from the time period. I enjoyed the various literary allusions as well as the plot of the committee on teaching grammar, but only because I'm an English PhD. I can't imagine these appealing in any way to an average reader. Aside from, perhaps, the pieces of Babbletower, I think the novel could have--and probably should have-- done without basically everything else mentioned here.
It took me a long time to finish this book, compared to how quickly I usually read, and if I wasn't someone who was very committed to finishing books that I start, I would have abandoned this one long before its conclusion. Certainly a much different experience for me that Byatt's Possession, which remains one of my favorite novels.
However, the various threads reach no conclusion: we see bits and pieces of Frederica's Laminations, but not its conclusion; we hear parts of Agatha's adventure story but not the end; we read large chunks of Babbletower but not the meat of it, and the novel bizarrely ends with the conclusion of Babbletower, clearly far removed from the last segment of the text we were given. I do think Byatt captured the mood of the 1960s and the novel is situated firmly within real socio-historical events from the time period. I enjoyed the various literary allusions as well as the plot of the committee on teaching grammar, but only because I'm an English PhD. I can't imagine these appealing in any way to an average reader. Aside from, perhaps, the pieces of Babbletower, I think the novel could have--and probably should have-- done without basically everything else mentioned here.
It took me a long time to finish this book, compared to how quickly I usually read, and if I wasn't someone who was very committed to finishing books that I start, I would have abandoned this one long before its conclusion. Certainly a much different experience for me that Byatt's Possession, which remains one of my favorite novels.