A. S. Byatt 8-16-21

 Here comes an example of where I got a different notion of the writer from her work than might be reality: A. S. Byatt. I thought more along my age, not my mother’s age. Why is it that women novelists born in the thirties draw my interest? That group includes Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood, and Alice Munro as well as A. S. Byatt.

A quick trip to Wikipedia put paid to some of my notions.  It also left me wondering why I had not known of her as more than a vague literary name. 

Dame Antonia Susan Duffy DBE HonFBA (née Drabble; born 24 August 1936), known professionally as A. S. Byatt (/ˈbaɪ.ət/ BY-ət),[1] is an English novelist, poet and Booker Prize winner, and won the 2017 Park Kyong-ni Prize. In 2008, The Times newspaper named her on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945

I suspect I knew her from the movie Possession which was based on her novel.  This is how I learn about many things - sideways.

The Modern Novel site has an entry for A.S. Byatt.  The site analyzes the only Byatt novel I have read, The Virgin in the Garden, and says in part:

Byatt’s novel is far too complex to analyze here. She looks not only at psychological themes, such as the effect of a dominating father on his family (wife and children), changing sexual mores in Britain and the role of the middle-class in providing culture to the working classes and at socio-historical themes such as the change from a drab war culture to a brighter post-war culture, the renaissance – real or imagined – of a change of monarch and the role of arts in a culture but at more profound philosophical themes such as the place and meaning of religion in a culture, the nature of Englishness and the eternal question of what is reality and what is not.

This may sound dull, but I did not find it a dull reading. I don't know where my notes have gone to and may be last, so please take my word that this is a novel worth reading and an author you should track down.

A.S. Byatt has a website of her own here. Here is a video interview that may be of interest. The novel has to be about emotions.