Roland Mitchell is an unhappy man. Stuck in a job in academia in which he sees no future for himself, with a boss who seems to dislike him at every turn and a girlfriend who doesn’t appreciate him much either, he trundles along until he finds an unfinished letter in a book belonging to famed Victorian poet, Randolp Henry Ash. Along with fellow researcher Maud Bailey, Roland sets out to discover to whom Ash was writing.
I was warned beforehand that I would either adore this book, or hate it. It’s neither, really. It took me a while to get going and after that, it was a fairly quick read, but I never engaged with it to the extent I hoped. Part of that is the writing style. I understand the juxtaposition that Byatt was going for: the dry, awkward tone of the academics versus the flowing, flowering English of the Victorian era, but that’s exactly the problem: the modern parts were uncomfortably flat and while the Victorian language is very well done, I never could get myself to like them.
The other problem is the cast of characters. Ash and Christabel LaMotte are rich and complex; Roland and Maud slightly less so, but enough to keep the reader engaged. It’s the other characters that annoyed me; they all seemed rather grotesque and bothersome. And in the last one hundred pages, the plot took a slight twist that left me a little credulous and, yes, I’ll admit to it, I skipped most of the poetry sections. Yes, I know there are clues, but I just couldn’t be bothered.
There’s a lot to like: the writing of the love letters is wonderful, full of love and pain and longing. I enjoy crime fiction, so watching Maud and Roland piece together the connection between Ash and Christabel was familiar territory, and as a detective novel, it works if you have the patience for it. All in all, this isn’t a bad book at all, though it has its flaws. It just wasn’t for me.