Despite the name, this is NOT a children's book! In fact, it is very grown-up fiction by the talented A.S. Byatt, author of the Booker Prize-winning novel
Possession. I vote that we skip over the sheer oddness of me reading an adult book amongst my regular YA blitz and just move on.
The Children's Book, set in the late Victorian period, explores the intertwined relationships of several families surrounding children's book author and matriarch Olive Wellwood. It spans the two decades preceding World War I, as well as several countries, multiple monarchs, and a turbulent stew of philosophical and social movements. At 675 pages, it ought to be overlong and bloated... but it is not. The many threads are complicated, intricately interwoven, and densely packed into the allotted space. (I do not know many stories that convey so much on every page.) There are so many characters that purportedly even Byatt herself had to create a spreadsheet to track them all! This is not a story to be read lightly or with half-attention.
While I am unlikely to reread this one for the sheer joy of it, I am very glad to have spent (considerable) time reading it. I was drawn in by Byatt's attention to relationship, particularly. Much historical fiction pimps either the characters or the setting to focus on the other aspect;
The Children's Book does not. The relationship between character and setting (including time) in inextricably tight. Every person's development, expectation, and struggle is informed by the environment and time in which they live. Conversely, the setting is informed by the characters (fictional and historical alike) which populate it. One without the other would be incomplete and cheap. Byatt's attention to historical detail and breadth also lends a polish and complexity that I very rarely see. Here is an author who understands the value of research and context!
The relationships between people are equally important. Byatt does not shy away from the reality of people for the sake of poetic license -- her characters are deeply flawed, which lends them the ability to make both striking and terrible choices, as the opportunities present themselves. The intertwined stories never end with marriage or love, nor death or betrayal; these are simply points in the greater continuum of the story, where time pushes relentlessly forward... toward war, toward death, toward progress, toward endlessly cyclical human nature. Incest, rape, lust, love, childbirth, passion, ambition, and bitterness are all matter-of-fact aspects of human relationships. At points, it almost feels horrific in how bluntly the overarching story includes these things. (For example, after one woman gives birth, Byatt refers to the "bleeding sack of her body.") Such things are often glossed over, but in the relationships between these characters, they are necessarily raw and they inform the development of the lives they touch.
It is a very good book. It feeds that English major and amateur historian still lurking somewhere in my soul.
Verdict: Densely packed, tightly woven, and insightful in disturbing, blunt ways. I would hand this to any aspiring author of the Great Novel as an example of a mature, fully realized work that very few will ever to achieve.
