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A review by jenniferaimee
Babel Tower by A.S. Byatt
4.0
This was deep and moving and dreadful and wonderful. I am so glad that I decided to continue on with this series (albeit mostly by accident) because this installment contained all of my favorite features of A.S. Byatt's writing. It was literary and human, full of flawed and sympathetic (and also some very much not sympathetic) characters. It did a masterful job of exploring the heady and hypocritical political and academic spheres of the 1960s, and the characters all acted in believable ways. I have grown to love this series because of the interlinked communities it explores and how much depth Byatt gives these communities. I don't believe there is one character in here whose favorite book Byatt hasn't given some consideration. The characters are older in this book, in new places in life, and the progression for each of them seems perfectly natural (or, if not natural, then explainable). Nothing in here was shoehorned or surprising, other than events or choices that were meant to be shocking. I enjoyed getting to spend more time with these characters, and I especially loved how Byatt used the climate of the 60s to structure her plot; the whole book worked immensely well.
The one part of the book that I did not like when it began was the novel within the novel. I, like so many in the book, found it off-putting and, although we were told repeatedly that Frederica wasn't writing, couldn't find a way to write, I was worried that she was the author. When it became apparent that it was Jude's book, I felt much better about it, because it made absolute sense coming from him. And then, when it was brought to trial, I realized that we were also being asked to evaluate what we had read; we were being given an opportunity to be a part of the jury, to answer the charges with our own experience of reading the excerpts. That made me absolutely love those parts, not because I liked Jude's "novel" any better, but because the experience of reading it drew us into criticizing the same piece of literature as the characters. The whole structure of the book was absolutely fantastic. This book made me think, and I loved it.
The one part of the book that I did not like when it began was the novel within the novel. I, like so many in the book, found it off-putting and, although we were told repeatedly that Frederica wasn't writing, couldn't find a way to write, I was worried that she was the author. When it became apparent that it was Jude's book, I felt much better about it, because it made absolute sense coming from him. And then, when it was brought to trial, I realized that we were also being asked to evaluate what we had read; we were being given an opportunity to be a part of the jury, to answer the charges with our own experience of reading the excerpts. That made me absolutely love those parts, not because I liked Jude's "novel" any better, but because the experience of reading it drew us into criticizing the same piece of literature as the characters. The whole structure of the book was absolutely fantastic. This book made me think, and I loved it.