The Children's Book
A.S. Byatt, 2009
Knopf Doubleday
688 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307473066
Summary
A spellbinding novel, at once sweeping and intimate, from the Booker Prize–winning author of Possession, that spans the Victorian era through the World War I years, and centers around a famous children’s book author and the passions, betrayals, and secrets that tear apart the people she loves.
When Olive Wellwood’s oldest son discovers a runaway named Philip sketching in the basement of the new Victoria and Albert Museum—a talented working-class boy who could be a character out of one of Olive’s magical tales—she takes him into the storybook world of her family and friends.
But the joyful bacchanals Olive hosts at her rambling country house—and the separate, private books she writes for each of her seven children—conceal more treachery and darkness than Philip has ever imagined. As these lives—of adults and children alike—unfold, lies are revealed, hearts are broken, and the damaging truth about the Wellwoods slowly emerges. But their personal struggles, their hidden desires, will soon be eclipsed by far greater forces, as the tides turn across Europe and a golden era comes to an end.
Taking us from the cliff-lined shores of England to Paris, Munich, and the trenches of the Somme, The Children’s Book is a deeply affecting story of a singular family, played out against the great, rippling tides of the day. It is a masterly literary achievement by one of our most essential writers. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Aka—Antonia Susan Drabble Byatt
• Birth—August 24, 1936
• Where—Sheffield, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Cambridge University; undergraduate
work, Bryn Mawr College (USA) and Oxford University
• Awards—Booker Prize
• Currently—lives in London, England, and France
A. S. Byatt is the author of numerous novels, including the quartet The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, Babel Tower, and A Whistling Woman; The Biographer's Tale; and Possession, which was awarded the Booker Prize.
She has also written two novellas, published together as Angels & Insects; five collections of shorter works, including The Matisse Stories and Little Black Book of Stories; and several works of nonfiction.
A distinguished critic as well as a novelist, she lives in London. (From the publisher and Barnes & Noble.)
She is the sister of author Margaret Drabble.
Book Reviews
While Byatt's engagement...is serious and deep, so much is stuffed into The Children's Book, that it can be hard to see the magic forest through for all the historical lumber—let alone the light at the end of the narrative tunnel.
Jennifer Schuessler - New York Times Book Review
Bristling with life and invention, it is a seductive work by an extraordinarily gifted writer…more compelling than the social and political history is the domestic drama among the dozen or more characters that Byatt draws in vivid detail…The Children's Book holds a mirror to the new middle class during an era of growing appreciation for children and greater sexual freedom for women and for the love that dares not speak its name. That Byatt marries this novel of ideas with such compelling characters testifies to her remarkable spinning energy.
Keith Donohue - Washington Post
A mesmerizing exploration of, well, everything: families, secrets, love, innocence, corruption, art, the desire for knowledge, nature, politics, war, sex, power.
Miami Herald
Byatt's overstuffed latest wanders from Victorian 1895 through the end of WWI, alighting on subjects as diverse as puppetry, socialism, women's suffrage and the Boer War, and suffers from an unaccountably large cast. The narrative centers on two deeply troubled families of the British artistic intelligentsia: the Fludds and the Wellwoods. Olive Wellwood, the matriarch, is an author of children's books, and their darkness hints at hidden family miseries. The Fludds' secrets are never completely exposed, but the suicidal fits of the father, a celebrated potter, and the disengaged sadness of the mother and children add up to a chilling family history. Byatt's interest in these artists lies with the pain their work indirectly causes their loved ones and the darkness their creations conceal and reveal. The other strongest thread in the story is sex; though the characters' social consciences tend toward the progressive, each of the characters' liaisons are damaging, turning high-minded talk into sinister predation. The novel's moments of magic and humanity, malignant as they may be, are too often interrupted by information dumps that show off Byatt's extensive research. Buried somewhere in here is a fine novel.
Publishers Weekly
A girl places some diminutive folk she's discovered into her doll house, then is imprisoned by a giant child herself. A prince discovers that he alone has no shadow. No, these aren't plot points in this masterly new work by the author of Possession but children's stories written by one of its protagonists, Olive Wellwood. There are, or course, actual children in the book—Olive's, with blustery banker-turned-crusader husband Humphrey; the Wellwood cousins; Julian, son of a keeper at the South Kensington Museum; Philip, the wayward boy discovered living surreptitiously in the museum, whom Olive brings home to her country estate; the family of brilliant but selfish master potter Benedict Fludd, who takes in the talented Philip as an unpaid apprentice; and more. Like the children in Olive's stories, these children have their notions quietly disabused; one small instant—say, a parent's overheard comment—and life is changed forever. It's the late 1800s, with new ideas in the air—and it's all rushing toward World War I. Verdict: Pitch perfect, stately, told with breathtakingly matter-of-fact acuteness, this is another winner for Byatt. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
Byatt encompasses the paradigm shift from Victorian to modern England in a sweeping tale of four families. The deeper subject, however, is the complex, not always benign bond that attaches children to adults. As the novel opens in 1895, Olive Wellwood seems the model New Woman: popular author of books that reinvent fairy tales for contemporary children, tolerant wife to Fabian Society stalwart Humphry, devoted mother pregnant with her seventh baby. She takes in Philip Warren, a working-class boy who longs to make art, and connects him with Benedict Fludd, a master potter whose family belongs to the Wellwoods' progressive, artistic circle. As the long, dense narrative unfolds, we see the dark side of these idealists' lives. Three of the children Olive is raising are not hers with Humphry; in another household, magnificent works of art reveal repellent acts of incest. The gothic sexual interconnections recall Bloomsbury, and Olive is clearly a gloss on E. Nesbit, but this is no mere roman a clef. Byatt's concern is the vast area where utopian visions collide with human nature. Her adult subjects, she writes, "saw, in a way that earlier generations had not, that children were people, with identities and desires and intelligences . . . But they saw this, so many of them, out of a desire of their own for perpetual childhood." World War I forces everyone to grow up. Only one son of this socialist set becomes a conscientious objector; the others serve and most of them die. The pace, positively stately in the novel's first half, speeds up and becomes unduly hasty in the final section. But Byatt has painted her large cast of characters so richly that we care aboutall of them even when their fates are summarized in a sentence. In the last chapter, the variously battered survivors reunite and dream once more: "They could make magical plays for a new generation of children."Ambitious, accomplished and intelligent in the author's vintage manner.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Why is this novel called The Children's Book? Discuss the many possible meanings this title suggests.
2. How are fairy tales important to the novel—both to the story and to the characters themselves? Byatt has said in interviews that fairy tales and the children's books of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as E. Nesbit's magical stories and The Wind in the Willows, inspired her to write the novel; do you see echoes of any of your favorite children's stories here?
3. We follow a huge cast of characters for nearly three decades over the course of the novel; whom did you care about most at the end? Many of the characters are not who they seem; how did your feelings about these characters change as the story developed?
4. What secrets are the many families in the novel—the Todefright Wellwoods, the Basil Wellwoods, the Cains, the Fludds, and even Elsie and Philip—hiding from each other and from outsiders? Which of the characters' betrayals did you find most shocking?
5. How does class constrain the characters in the novel? Olive and Elsie both marry outside their class—are they similar in any other ways? Which is the greater divide for them and the other characters in the novel: class or sex? How does Philip's absorption into the Wellwood circle differ from his sister's?
6. From the opening scene, pottery—the craft of it, its history, the contrast between fine art and factory-made pieces—is a recurring presence throughout the novel. Does Olive do the right thing in apprenticing Philip to Benedict Fludd? How does Byatt use the metaphor of clay to enrich the story?
7. A German puppeteer is a surprise guest at the Wellwoods' Midsummer party at the beginning of the novel. What role do puppets play in the novel, and what do they represent? How does the relationship between the German and British characters change as the novel unfolds?
8. What is the significance of the Tree House? What does it mean to Tom—and to his siblings?
9. Motherhood is a crucial part of the novel, and of Olive's stories; Olive herself is something of a "Mother Goose," as in her story "The Shrubbery" on pages 105–114. But is Olive a good mother? What about Violet, and the other mothers in the story?
10. How does the notion of lineage—of knowing who one's real parents are—affect the children in the novel? Does knowing "the truth" ultimately make much difference to the adults the children grow into—or do the people who actually raise them, and the way they are raised, make more of an impact?
11. A number of the adult characters are artists in one way or another; many of them—through their art or their actions—cause damage to the other people in their lives. Discuss how the artists in the novel both create and destroy.
12. Discuss the Fludd family. Why do you think Byatt chose not to divulge the specifics of Benedict's acts? What do you think he did?
13. In an essay she wrote for the London Times, Byatt wrote, "There is a strong case to be made that the Edwardians enjoyed school stories, magical tales, and tales of children alone in landscapes—woodland camps, secret expeditions—because they were themselves reluctant to grow up." How do the adults in the novel reflect this idea? What distinction do the characters make between childhood and adulthood? What distinction is Byatt making through the novel?
14. Several characters embrace the notion of free love, or of sex outside marriage. What is the result? Is it good for any of them? How do these attitudes resemble, or not, those of the 1960s in the United States?
15. How is Dorothy—who doesn't share her mother's love of stories, who is the serious daughter, and who becomes a doctor—different from her siblings? How does Humphry's revelation, and his betrayal, change her?
16. Several characters undergo transformations. Is Charles/Karl's the most obvious, or the least?
17. Olive writes stories for each of her seven children, which are bound into their own private books. As the novel unfolds, the story written for her oldest and most beloved son, Tom—"Tom Underground"—becomes more and more important. Why does he cling so tightly to this fairy tale? What does the metaphor of shadow signify? Why does he see the play his mother writes as a betrayal?
18. On page 562, Dorothy tells Tom that he's responsible for Philip's success. Is this accurate? Why or why not?
19. What is the significance of the stone with a hole that Tom picks up on page 586?
20. Why does Hedda try to destroy the Gloucester Candlestick? Is it a coincidence that she chose this item? How does the suffragette movement affect her and the other women in the story?
21. Reread Julian's poetry. How does it reflect upon the novel itself?
22. The Children's Book is a historical panorama that encompasses many political and social movements of the early twentieth century. Were you familiar with the figures and movements Byatt discusses: the Fabian Society, British socialists, women's rights, etc.? What is your understanding of their purpose in the novel?
23. The acknowledgments give a glimpse of the research that went into the novel; what subjects did you most enjoy learning about? How does Byatt's erudition enrich her storytelling?
24. The Great War seems to take nearly all of the characters by surprise; were you surprised by the scope of the damage it inflicted? Which character is most changed by the war? Did it change the way you saw the characters' sexual and personal secrets—and how they themselves saw their own lives?
25. Reread page 675, the last page of the novel. Is it a happy ending? What emotions are conjured by this reunion, which takes place in a far different setting than that which opens the novel—and around a bowl of soup?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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