Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Through the Looking Glass

Possession by A.S. Byatt

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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 […]

Blackout. The Whale has eaten me. I repeat the Whale has eaten me and I am now dead. #CBRBINGO – White Whale

Possession by A.S. Byatt

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This review will not be long, for this book has defeated me, and in such a way that I don’t overly feel like enumerating what went wrong here. The short answer is most likely that I’m just not the right reader for this book (and this author, which is why I’ve deleted The Children’s Book from my TBR). I bought this ages ago, probably over a decade, and finally gave it a try about six years ago. I got 48 pages in before I said I’d […]

“A kiss might be blameless, so long as it was the other person doing the leaning. Was it your fault, really, if someone else kissed you?”

The Portrait of a Mirror by A. Natasha Joukovsky

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What if A.S. Byatt’s Possession popped up again in the internet age? The Portrait of a Mirror answers that question with a heaping helping of Greek mythology to boot. Diana, Wes, Dale, and Vivien are spoiled obsessives staring at themselves into eternity. They are slimy people, but you know what? I don’t care! I want them to be happy in their clandestine adventures, and I want them to be miserable in their public falling outs! Wes and Diana are married. Their relationship is a constant sparring match that […]

this book has been kicking around for 30ish years and I just picked it up NOW?!

Possession by A.S. Byatt

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…and it’s been sitting in my own collection for a good decade or so? How did I keep stepping around this one? This book was written for me- or at least the me of ten years ago. DEFINITLEY the me of twenty years ago. 14-year-old-me would have swooned myself into an early grave with this one! A youngish academic is sinking further and further into classic British gloom. He’s in a dead relationship, putting in time in a dead-end job, researching crumbs on a long-dead […]

They hammer, they slash. They do not study.

Ragnarok: The End of the Gods by A.S. Byatt

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CBR11 BINGO: Remix (Retelling of Norse Myths) A.S. Byatt is an author that I find difficult and I can only tackle one of her novels every so often when I feel I am up to the task. It’s always worth the effort, but it takes a lot of concentration to deal with the richness of her language and the scope of her thoughts. It’s a little like reading philosophy, mythology, psychology, poetry and historical fiction all at once. This little book of only 171 pages […]

My Possession Obsession

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Possession is a mesmerizing story, or two stories, steeped in mystery, secrecy and discovery. Set in both the modern world and the Victorian age, Possession tells the parallel stories of characters whose intellectual pursuits bring them together but also spark jealousies alongside great creativity. Byatt’s writing is genius. The detail and creativity, the imagination, she brings to her work is simply breathtaking. The novel begins in London, circa 1990. Roland is a scholar/academic, living with longtime girlfriend Val in rather dire straits. His field is […]



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