During this past month, I felt a hankering for a thumping good British novel, or even just the books that take me to that part of the world. Having grown up in Great Britain and its former colony, Nigeria, despite being an American citizen, I read British fiction as a child. As an adult, I even decided to go to graduate school there. (It was an experience that made me feel, and continue to feel, as American as I have ever felt, but that is a story for another time.) My BA is in English Literature with a specialization in the Victorian period, so it is no wonder that I just picked up a potential doorstopper that has been lying on my shelf in my long “to read” queue: The Children’s Book, by A.S. Byatt.

Byatt has long been known as the Booker Prize–winning author of Possession, Angels and Insects, and other novels that explore the Victorian era through story and accompanying broad-sweeping interludes of history. In her most recent work, published in 2009, she focuses on the end of the Victorian era, roughly from 1895 stretching onwards into the Edwardian era and until the end of World War I. 

Her story focuses on a Bohemian family named the Wellwoods who live in a rambling, children-strewn farmhouse to which they invite fellow artists, members of the Arts and Crafts movement, anarchists, and intellectuals for a fancy-dress party every Midsummer’s Eve. Olive Wellwood is a lovely children’s author who compulsively spins fairy tales and fantastic stories, even for her offspring, who each have a physical book of their own story that is added to over the years. Her wondrous writing existence is a great contrast to her impoverished, Dickensian upbringing in a coal-mining community in Yorkshire. Husband Humphry, a banker who is also an active member of the socialist Fabian Society, is a writer of anonymous satirical exposés on the finance industry, who comments on banking matters leading up to the Boer War. This is the starting point of the story, but in many and most ways it is “the children’s books”: books about the trajectories of Tom, Dorothy, Phyllis, Hedda, Florian, and Robin Wellwood, along with the fellow children of their relatives and friends.

One reason I enjoyed this novel, despite its length, is that it focuses on the riches and danger of the fairy story. Despite Olive’s instincts, her children inevitably grow up and, as all children do, see their parents’ faults and the lies that they weave to keep their household intact. As they grow, Byatt occasionally inserts a chapter or fairy story “written” by Olive either in general or as part of one of the children’s evolving “stories.” They are wonderfully imaginative and provide a counterpoint to the difficulties or banalities being experienced not just by her children but by the others she helps or occasionally cares for. Such fantasy is necessary, and it reminds one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s belief in fairies during that era. Yet they cannot put off the realities thrust upon her children as they begin pondering what life has in store for them.

One such character is Philip Warren, a grimy, uneducated boy driven to be a master potter whom Olive finds hiding out in a museum, studying the decorative arts there. Perhaps because he reminds her of her own humble beginnings, she connects him to a genius of the craft, Benedict Fludd, where Warren takes on an informal apprenticeship. He learns the rich intricacies of creating patterns, glazes, and forms while also finding out the very dark and twisted basis to Fludd’s family relations. These in a more severe way echo some of the unsavory secrets in the loving but deeply flawed Wellwood home. As the reader progresses, it does indeed seem that the original Midsummer Eve party was a Golden Age that ironically presaged the future, as everyone dressed up to take part in reenacting A Midsummer Night’s Dream and no one was as they seemed. As in Angels and Insects, Byatt rips the dressy cover off her fictional families to reveal the love, connections, and seething, dysfunctional messes underneath. She does so here in a subtle, almost repressed way that is much more effective than a more florid account.

Another aspect to this creation that interested me was the amount of history woven in and around the personal stories. Byatt presents the history of intellectual trends and their interactions with historical events, such as the Boer War and World War I. She also showcases the Arts and Crafts trend in industrial design, particularly in telling the fictional story of the potters Philip Warren and Benedict Fludd, and their trip to Paris’s Grande Exposition Universelle of 1900 to expose themselves to the artistic and inventor trends of the day. Lesser histories of such real-life monumental artistic figures as Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley weave themselves into the story. Through Humphry’s German sister-in-law, Katharina Wellwood, the family has a connection to Germany. German theatrical designers and puppeteers show off the beauty of their art and their historical period while collaborating with Olive in presenting fairy stories.

In the end, the historical setting that finally clashes with the fairy stories, or sometimes echoes them in a morbid way, is the onset of World War I and the way the former “children” of the book are now old enough to become soldiers and nurses. A few of the descriptions Byatt provides are enough to teach anyone what this terrible war of attrition cost Europe, and England in particular, in terms of innocence, blood, and treasure. Some of her descriptions could easily be inserted in books used for European History 101-102, which often do not do enough to impart viscerally the mind-numbing horror of that war and how it shattered any complacency Europe once had. Our less intense attitude towards Veterans’ Day is evident on November 11. In Great Britain, it is remembered vividly, and everyone buys small red paper poppies to wear in their lapels and benefit veterans’ charities. This is a result of both the major twentieth-century wars they endured, and I wish we would make a point to do something similar to recognize those who fought and defended.

I would not recommend this book if you have a short attention span or need a plot to move along rapidly. There are many other excellent books that will fit your needs. The Children’s Book requires some time, an interest in learning about artistic and intellectual history, and perhaps a fascination with the very nature of art and the fairy story. If you are compelled to study British and European history and fiction, that is another plus. The characters and the plot moved along at sufficient speed for me, and the family stories and other aspects of this tome gradually became more and more interesting. (For example, after reading about the craftsman Philip Warren and his difficult apprenticeship, I wanted to become a potter!) At over 600 pages, it would take some time, but January has plenty of dark, cold evenings for a complex, excellent read like this one.

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