Allison's Picks

The Children's Book concerns, among many other things, the flowering of creativity and imagination in the Edwardian Era in England and the way in which it comes to a screeching halt with the beginning of WWI and it's horrors. The story centers around Olive Wellwood - well-known author of fairy-tales for children - her family of 6 children, and all of their friends. While much of the story deals in the realities of living through this period in England - and Byatt is very thorough in pulling in details from the history of the time to inform the characters' milieu - much of the story also takes place in the fantastical realm of Olive's imagination. Olive writes children's stories to escape from her rather dark and troubled past, but it's no surprise that rather than escaping her past Olive just relives it within her stories and the fantasy-realm darkness that results remains a presence throughout the book, haunting many of the characters as they try to deal with growing up at the eve of WWI. Olive's fantasies and the real world blend together until it's difficult to tell where one world begins and where the other ends. This leads to disastrous results for some of Byatt's characters, especially the Wellwood children who are especially entangled in Olive's fantasies. While this book can be a bit dense and Byatt can be a bit pedantic at times, the elements of fantasy and the darkness that haunts not only Olive and her children but really all of England as WWI draws near and threatens an end to their Edwardian bliss really made this book unforgetable and impossible for me to put down. I was so caught up in it's epic unfoldings that I never wanted it to end.

I loved, loved, loved this book. Ida discovers that - tendon by tendon, vein by vein - she is turning slowly to glass. It begins with a splinter-sized piece on the sole of her foot and spreads day by day, inch by inch up her legs. In desperation, she travels back to the place it all began: St. Hauda's island, a monochromatic land of ice but also a magical land of tiny, moth-winged cattle and an unnamed creature that turns everything it sees pure white. Here, Ida meets Midas Crook, a painfully introverted photographer who becomes Ida's constant companion. As the two search desperately for a cure, Ida, out of pure need for connection and love, violently cracks the more metaphorical ice surrounding Midas. Dragging him out of his shell of inhibitions and memories, she forces him to be fully present and fully alive now, with her, before it's too late. Wonderful. I'm recommending it to everyone and anyone.

In the year 2019, humans finally recieve a transmission from outer space: the most beautiful music ever heard. While resulting UN debates threaten to drag on for years, the Catholic Church and its Jesuit community does what it has done throughout history and prepares a team to visit the planet Rakhat. Years later, the mission has failed and only Emilio Sandoz returns, alive but forever haunted and disfigured by the events that transpired on that distant world. What unfolds in a series of flashbacks is the powerful story of the first-encounter between two intelligent cultures and the uplifting discoveries and disastrous mistakes that result from their misinformation and good intentions.