The Children’s Book by A.S.Byatt – A book review

 

Only if life were a story....

But life is a story, isn’t it; every moment lived, of everyone’s life, some glorious, some plain, some recounted by grandparents, some cherished, some not so cherished. Some events make it to the history books, almost often quoted to the best of imperfection; others exist as individual or collective memories.

A historical fiction, Byatt’s story is a mammoth one, a tapestry upon which are woven intricately, colourfully and carefully, a design, a pattern that appeals to the readers for its individual portraits as much as for the entire landscape it creates. It’s a universe where the worlds of fairies, gnomes, sylphs and spirits have as much importance as the flesh and bone of myriad visible humans.

Olive Wellwood is a story teller, a writer rather; a writer of children’s books, a respected and admired one. She writes imaginary stories for each of her children, publishes them to the world; she hunts for her characters in museums, in vases and historical portraits, in puppet shows, in her children. Tom, her favourite son seems to be trapped in his story, hers and can’t get out. Like the prince who lost and can’t find his shadow, Tom seems to be lost and can’t find himself, can’t place himself in the word like everyone else so easily does, or so it seems.

It’s a difficult life for adults, but more so for children, especially the ones getting out of their cocoons of infanthood to find a place in the world. Unlike fawns and calves, we can’t start walking a few minutes after being pushed out of the womb; fortunately or unfortunately, we are humans. We need to be nurtured to get a grip. Who should they imitate, what’s good and what’s not, is it okay to be themselves – a plethora of unguided, often misguided, at times unanswered questions haunt the teenager as every single day proves to be a different one as they saunter towards the path of adulthood. It’s bad to have no options, but worse to have enough of them.

Though at the Wellwood household and the entangled families of their near ones, the children are treated as growing adults and their choices are honoured, the children find themselves at most times in a midden of deception. And in the midst of this treachery, they fall, grope, struggle, rebel to get away. They discover, things that should have been best left to the slothful beast of ignorance; but they do, they discover the frightful things they shouldn’t, that others shouldn’t about them.

Like the vagarious genius of Benedict Fludd and his apprentice Philip, Byatt creates them and her other characters from clay and like their beautifully carved, intricate and meticulous vases and pots, she moulds and shapes them. But the pots don’t be themselves without going through the hearth of the furnace and so does Byatt, put her characters, children and adults alike through the conflagration of life and relationships. Some are broken, some shine like a gilded blaze – a delight to the senses.

At times, it feels like you are reading newspaper excerpts of a bygone era. The Fabians, the Quakers, the Socialists and the Anarchists, the Nihilists, their thoughts, their ideologies and idealism run like veins through the story. Byatt’s canvas is replete with the arts and crafts, puppeteers and their wooden dolls, music and festivals, museums and extravagances, the rustic beauty of the countryside, the wilderness, cultures and their nuances, the dangling sword of war and then the war itself. As is the sagacious disposition of geniuses, in this labyrinth too, the author, like a master puppeteer pulls and loosens the strings of her marionettes to perfection and woos her audience, who keep their hands glued to the page, refrain from letting their eyes to wander and yet let their heart and mind to. The era is one where heterosexuality isn’t abhorred, where age is no barrier, where a single episode of intimate, salacious closeness is forgotten as easily as it happened, though it results in the placement of a seed in a womb; doubtful parentage isn’t disturbing. A girl you treated as your friend, a sister, is asked to be called your mother the next day!

The story also deals with the plight of women of that time, of all times, their fight to their entitlement to suffrage, to individualism, to find their feet in the land of men. As the frustrated Florence says,
“The truth is that the women we are (readying to be doctors, researchers, educated) – have become – are not fit to do without men, or to live with them, in the world as it was. And if we change, and they don’t, there will be no help for us. We shall be poor monsters.”
“A woman has to be extraordinary; she can’t just do things as though she had a right.”

A delightful read, Byatt’s characters, their rawness, their eccentricity, their plight, their vagaries, their love, their disgust will stay with you for a long time after you’ve turned the last page. At times, one might feel lost, frustrated with the neglect of a character (there are many), but Byatt ensures that her marionettes are not hanging from the stand for too long – she brings them to life when you think you are on the brink of letting go and moving on, asking, begging for more!

My rating: * * * * * * * * * * - 8/10

Picture copyright:
ASByatt image - http://readingsubtly.blogspot.in/2012/04/madness-and-bliss-critical-vs-primitive.html

The Children's Book image - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Children%27s_Book

 

A. S. Byatt