IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD NOVEL OF VICTORIAN POETS

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, February 23, 1992                   TAG: 9202230335
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: D-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Reviewed by SCOTT SHACKELFORD
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD NOVEL OF VICTORIAN POETS
POSSESSION. By A.S. Byatt. Vintage. $12 (trade paper).
The central characters in this surprise best-seller are Randolph Henry Ash, a controversial Victorian poet, and Christabel LaMotte, also a poet, with whom he has an affair. Nothing is known of their romance, however, until two present-day scholars discover their love letters, which have lain untouched for more than a century.
The discovery overturns lifetimes of research on Ash and LaMotte by a small trans-Atlantic group of engrossing and frequently eccentric academics. These self-appointed experts maneuver for possession of the letters in a competition that resembles a literary "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World."
Obsession drives Ash for LaMotte, and obsession drives the contemporary cast of characters for all available (and unavailable) knowledge about the dead poets. Author A.S. Byatt masterfully sustains dramatic tension between sets of people living in the 1860s and the 1980s, tension that arches back and forth across the century as new information on Ash and LaMotte comes to light.
In addition to the poets' intellectual effects on each other, the sociological influences of the Victorian era are reflected in poetry and recovered journals. Late 19th-century society was both fascinated and unsettled by ongoing discoveries in science and developments in theology.
Ash, a naturalist, makes constant allusions to plant and animal life. LaMotte struggles painfully for recognition at a time when women received little reward or credit for their artistic or literary talent. That fact does not go unnoticed by the novelist's contemporary feminist scholars, and particularly by one Leonora Stern of Florida State University, who, among these many fascinating people, steals the show.
A.S. Byatt skillfully builds suspense to a dramatic conclusion in a church graveyard, after which differences are forgiven and relationships are resolved. "Possession" is a rewarding experience.

Scott Shackelford is a Roanoke writer.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB