- Awards And Honors:
- Booker Prize
Possession
Possession, novel by British scholar and writer A.S. Byatt, first published in 1990. It won the Booker Prize for 1990, and it was adapted as a film in 2002.
In the fiercely competitive world of academia, two young researchers, Roland Michell and Maud Bailey, are each researching individually into the lives and works of two apparently unconnected fictional Victorian poets, Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte. The story opens in 1986 in the London Library, where Michell, looking at a book that once belonged to Ash, finds a romantic letter in Ash’s hand that is addressed to someone who is not his wife. Michel pockets the letter and sets out to find the mysterious other woman. He discovers that she is a minor poet called Christabel LaMotte and is pointed to one of only two scholars of her work, Maud Bailey.
Michell heads to Lincolnshire to meet Bailey and tell her of his discoveries. Bailey suggests examining the journals of Blanche Glover, LaMotte’s housemate who is thought to have also been her lover. The journals reflect jealousy of LaMotte’s correspondence with an unknown person, and this confirms Michell’s belief that Ash and LaMotte were connected. Bailey takes Michell to see the manor house that LaMotte lived in, and they come upon the current owners of the house, who let them look at the bedroom LaMotte stayed in. Here Bailey finds a cache of letters that confirm a love affair between the two poets.
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As their research deepens, parallels develop. Michell’s girlfriend is upset by the time he is spending with Bailey, as they discover that Glover confronted Ash’s wife with her suspicions that the poets were having an affair. Other Ash scholars become aware of Michell and Bailey’s quest and seek to own the revelation of the affair themselves. The story culminates at Ash’s grave, where all researchers converge after one has dug up a collection of letters that were buried with Ash. The letters reveal that LaMotte gave birth to Ash’s daughter, Maia, who was raised as LaMotte’s niece, and that Maia, who was Bailey’s ancestor, thus makes Bailey the owner of the correspondence between the poets.
Michell and Bailey, together with their helpers and rivals, use diary entries, letters, and poetry written by Ash, LaMotte, and people connected with them, to unearth the previously unsuspected relationship between the poets. Byatt created all these literary artifacts, giving each writer a very different voice. In addition, she twice uses the voice of an omniscient narrator describing actions of Ash and LaMotte that the modern-day scholars remain unaware of.
Possession is a novel of depth and scholarship, of ideas and analysis. It is also a multilayered love story, as well as both a Victorian novel and a very modern one, blending academia with spiritualism and passion with poetry, much of it original to the book. It mixes myth with modern university life and romance with a detective story.