Possession
Ratings59
Average rating4
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.
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I wish I liked this a bit more than I did. I really liked the literary/academic mystery. The descriptions were beautiful. I totally lost steam with all the poems and letters though. I can definitely see why people love this, but it just wasn't quite there for me. I'm not sure if having seen the movie first helped or hurt. I think the movie condensed the story in a better way, but I also kept waiting for them to figure things out because I remembered enough of the movie. Overall it's beautiful and I'm glad I read it, it's just not a love for me.
I find self-consciously artistic prose like this very wearing. I felt like there were too many nonsensical analogies and metaphors that just felt distracting. I may need to come back to this when I'm in a different frame of mind. If I can love HP Lovecraft and his over-the-top style, why do I stumble over this?
Not sure what the actual plot was supposed to be about but the first quarter of the book was a quagmire of people I wasn't interested in, poetry, and diving into topics I wasn't interested in.
I'm not waiting around for the remaining 16 hours of audio to find out.
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