Possession

When I read a book I enjoy, I tend to run the table on his or her writings. When I've read everything about and by the author, I move on to someone else.

When I was in graduate school, I took a class on the post-war British novel. One of the novels we read was "Angels & Insects" by A.S. Byatt. I was entranced and set on a quest to read everything she had ever written.

Along the way, I found "Possession." (My copy doesn't have the movie cover. I hate books that use pictures from the movie as its cover.)

It's a literary mystery and a romance. What could be better? The main characters are grad-school types, so I immediately felt kindred to them.  The novel does move back and forth in time, and that could be confusing at times, but I eventually got used to it.

My favorite part about any mystery is the moment when the reader "gets" what the author has been driving at all along. Words on a page -- written in the past, by someone I have never met -- cause my brain to go somewhere it has never been before and will never go again!

Amazing. Read "Possession." You won't regret it. The movie is nice, too, despite the presence of Gwyneth.