Angels & Insects: Two Novellas

...look to A.S. Byatt. Hers is a voice that carries you until the book's final pages. Having read Possession, Byatt has catapulted herself toward the writer of distinction that she truly is. I love Morpho Eugenia -- the words carried me. And even though The Conjugal Angel isn't as impressive as the first novella, the sensuous and lucid language is a work of art nevertheless. I have got to spread the word on this exceptional book! I hadn't expected the writing to move me so much. What more could I say other than the fact that this is an excellent piece of literature. Ms. Byatt, I applaud this marvelous effort...

Byatt is one of my favourite authors, and her talent for style, subtlety and depth in her narrative are present in these novellas. Both these novellas are alluring, in different ways. The first, Angels and Insects, drew me in firstly because of its title. The pervasive feeling of things not quite fitting together for the main character holds the reader throughout the story. The author keeps the story the perfect length. Check out the movie also...it is quite faithful to the story. The second novella, initially appeared to be less interesting, but it is the more subtle of the two. As I learned of the lives of the characters, as they reminisce and review their emotions from long ago that refuse to entirely die, I found myself unable to put the book down. And I'm glad I didn't because the conclusion was very satisfying. Don't give up on it if you're inclined to, give this novella a chance, you won't regret it.

A. S. Byatt's "The Conjugial Angel," second novella of Angels and Insects, masterfully and tenderly revives the story of Alfred Tennyson and his college friend and mentor, Arthur Hallam. The story looks into a spiritualist group which meets in the home of Emily Tennyson Jesse, Alfred's sister and Arthur's fiance at the time of his death, and although members of the group have individual desires and losses, the reader soon learns that one of their highest goals is to contact the spirit of Hallam. Emily, it seems, has unfinished business with him. She has felt overshadowed by her brother's public expression of grief in his grand poem In Memoriam; she has felt angry and seems to believe her life has been on "hold" since Hallam's death. It is true that she married Captain Jesse, but in so doing, she incurred expressions of disapproval from many including Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Hallam, too, has "issues," the chief being chained to earth by these grieving, unsettled people. One of the women of the seance group finally encounters Hallam in a horrible but artistically powerful scene, and they together also connect with Tennyson, now an old man. This is one of the book's tenderest scenes. Others include the narrator's presentation of the nineteenth-century's answer to Carlyle's question "What exactly is a miracle?" and another longed-for reunion of a wife and her husband, long assumed lost at sea. All in all, The Conjugial Angel is a tour de force, and yes, it is made sweeter if the reader is up on nineteenth-century literary history and a vulnerable reader of In Memoriam. I just taught this novella alongside In Memoriam in a course I called "Bronte et al. Today"; we also read Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea, and several other nineteenth-century classics with their contemporary "spins." It was exhilarating, and the Tennyson/Byatt pairing was as powerful as any other two. Byatt is deep, scholarly; she quotes a little poetry here, too--not nearly the amount used in Possession!--but the result is of sterling reading quality.

I have read several works by A.S. Byatt, and I must say that Angels and Insects is her best yet. Her understanding of romanticism literature and human emotions make this story seem real. It will make you cry, gasp, laugh, and scream without you knowing it either. I highly recommend this book to anybody who loves gothic, romanticism stories set in the 19th century with an intelligence all of its own. It makes you realize the imperfections of humans, even in the most prestiegest of families.