Possession
Winner of England’s Booker Prize and the literary sensation of the year, Possession is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once an intellectual mystery and triumphant love story. It is the tale of a pair of young scholars researching the lives of two Victorian poets. As they uncover their letters, journals, and poems, and track their movements from London to Yorkshire—from spiritualist séances to the fairy-haunted far west of Brittany—what emerges is an extraordinary counterpoint of passions and ideas. An exhilarating novel of wit and romance, an intellectual mystery, and a triumphant love story. This tale of a pair of young scholars researching the lives of two Victorian poets became a huge bookseller favorite, and then on to national bestellerdom.
Stats for nerds
3recommend
8mentions
7people
2010–2025years
50% recommend50% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Oh that’s interesting - I’d never thought of Possession as being dark academia. But you’re right, it is. It’s certainly one of my favorite novels, on another level than The Secret History which I also enjoyed. Every time I re-read it I am impressed all over again by how it’s woven together and, not least, how Byatt managed to write all the poems herself.
- I think you sometimes need to be in the right frame of mind to tackle some books, especially the more "literary" or complicated novels. "Possession" was like that. It's one of the great books I've read and perhaps the first time I saw that some authors are on a higher literary level than almost all others. Byatt was like that. Beautiful book. I also enjoyed "Ragnarok" and "The Childrens Book" but "Possession" is one I will re-read at some point.
- Really? its about cultural appropriation, UNESCO treaties and Switzerland, and the securitisation of investment in documents and stamps with a dash of tax, ponzi more than the effect "Sade" has on any story. I don't think very many prior owners felt it was "cursed" -They just disputed the means of owning it, and who had better claim. Value wise, it certainly went up (until the Ponzi scheme value went bananas)
There's not a perversion in sight, except the financial. He wrote it on a roll like Kerouac. That was new to me (Kerouac had a typewriter. De Sade had a pot of glue. I hope it was glue. Maybe he made do with what was to hand...)
The same curse can be said to vest in almost any literary work which has gone missing in action. It's why "the Hitler Diaries" happened: the value to some of the goods as handled is inestimable. People still say the Mona Lisa returned after theft is a fake and some Mafia lord has the real one in a safe, to gloat over. Perhaps that's why "glass onion" had it?
"Possession" by A.S.Byatt is a fictionalisation of the problem. Beautifully written.
If you were a soi-disant author, man of letters, handy with a whip, and about to be consumed by the wreckage of your prison .. wouldn't you grab that roll of bog-paper you'd been writing on? Apparently not. Maybe he was saner than people think?
- Interesting. Nice notes, thanks! I liked "Leven of malice" and found myself thinking of it again recently reading "the shipping news": -the resonances of small (and not so small) town newspaper publishing in the two. And Proulx writes of similarly broken people.
"A mixture of frailties" is a great read for anyone who has uprooted themselves for serious study or work, and suffers culture shock.
My mum was an art historian and studied under Anthony Blunt at the Courtauld Institute so you can understand how "Cornish" read to me.
If you haven't read "Possession" by AS Byatt, I think having enjoyed "Cornish" you would like it. A very different book but touching many similar concepts without the magical realism perhaps. (Academic rivalries, art history)
I often think of the "putting yourself on trial" rap from "the Manticore" -my own star chamber isn't always as even handed.
- I don't think it fits in the genre particularly? Been a while since I read it though.
The bigger omission is Byatt's Possession, predating The Secret History by a couple years and I think possibly being the type specimen of what is now called dark academia.
- Some of the value people associate with provenance comes from the mystery Ave human drama involved in establishing a provenance chain. (Think of Byatt’s Possession or the way a scholarly dispute raises the profile of a work of art.) Any digital record really drains the romance out of the whole process.
