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Title: A Whistling Woman by A.S. BYATT ISBN: 0-375-41534-3 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 10 December, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.6 (5 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: Not up to Byatt standards
Comment: I have read the first three novels in the series perhaps five times a piece. I have lived deeply in the lives of the characters. My knowledge of English literature and history has added depth because of those novels.
Thus, I must admit to deep disappointment in the Whistling Woman. It seemed Byatt just wanted to end the lives of the characters as quickly as possible. The plot was shaky and not quite believable. For me there was no closure. I hate to admit to identifying so greatly with fictional people, but it seemed Byatt had forgotten the lives she created and was thoughtlessly butchering the intricate world she had built.
The final novel does not contain enough social and academic theory to satisfy the thirst Byatt so thoroughly quenches.
If you love the series, don't read the final book. Make up your own ending. Trust me, it will be much better than the hack job Byatt has handed us.
Rating: 5
Summary: Wow
Comment: While reading A Whistling Woman, I kept wishing that more novelists wrote as well, as wonderfully, as A.S. Byatt. A Whistling Woman is a terrific novel, in my opinion almost as good as her phenomenal Possession. The story of Frederica Potter comes to a close (at least for us readers) at the end of the novel, and what a story it is--not for plotting reasons, but for how it is told. A Whistling Woman is an intelligently written, thoughtful and thought provoking novel of ideas focusing on one woman, Frederica, and a number of others who touch her life. Byatt shifts back and forth between plot lines and characters in a manner similar to Iris Murdoch. Like Murdoch, Byatt draws heavily from philisophical learning. All of the characters are highly intelligent and not afraid to show it. This is a wonderful, wonderful novel--one of the best I have read in quite some time. Enjoy!
Rating: 5
Summary: Laminations
Comment: This book is so much bigger than the pages it encompasses. Yes, it has a weak narrative arc compared with more popular fiction but the layers of metaphor and meaning enrich the story while the ending leaves all things possible. One word defines the core of this book. A word I had not heard before and one I looked up in the dictionary - Syzygy. This word means both "opposition" and "conjunction," and this is what this novel is all about. Opposite schools of thought and scholarly disciplines are seen to be in conjunction when discussed on Fredrica's TV show, the anti-university tries to be opposite to the real university but remains in conjunction in a weird way - it cannot survive as an anti-university without a university, the Ottaker Twins are in a strange syzygy dance throughout the novel and end up scarred by the same experience. Apart from this idea of conjunction and opposition, which I guess defined a lot of the sixties, there are many other wonderful literary games in the book. Fredrica's search for the meaning of metaphor plays a small but important part in our understanding of the whole while Bill Potter's epiphany about art is a fascinating place for this curmudgeon character to end up at. Philosophy is pitted against psychology, science against symbolism and love against destruction and everything ends up being linked at the end of the day. This is my favorite of the Fredrica books as I believe that A.S. Byatt has achieved more clarity here than ever before - or maybe I'm just getting it better!
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Title: STILL LIFE by A. S. Byatt ISBN: 0684835037 Publisher: Scribner Book Company Pub. Date: 01 January, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Virgin in the Garden by A. S. Byatt ISBN: 0679738290 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 January, 1992 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Babel Tower by A. S. Byatt ISBN: 0679736808 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 July, 1997 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Seven Sisters by Margaret Drabble ISBN: 0156028751 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 13 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Possession: A Romance by A. S. Byatt ISBN: 0679735909 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 October, 1991 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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