Word: byatt
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...novel's title is a clever allusion to Diderot's Rameau's Nephew. Its structure, while not entirely original, is ambitious. Reminiscent of Antonia Byatt's Possession, it uses the same conceit of imposing a fictional historical text upon the lives of contemporary characters and concocting a story to fill in the interstices...
...Volcano Lover, her fifth work of fiction, is a mild cerebral aphrodisiac. It is the sort of book that Sontag would probably call determinedly middlebrow. Her publisher, eager to start a buzz, compares it to "the postmodern potboilers of Umberto Eco and A.S. Byatt...
...Byatt added that "the English publisher panicked" when it saw the excessive poetry in the manuscript, "but I talked them into publishing it. Then, everybody sort of read it several times and became enthusiastic--at least that's my account...
Possession's tidy ending drew questions from the crowd. "You like a story to finish," Byatt answered. "Stories do end. Relationships end. The idea that something open-ended is more life-like is rubbish. I wanted [Possession] to have the artificial pleasure of the circle being closed...
...response to criticism that Possession's epilogue ruined the mystery of the story, Byatt said, "The person I actually care most about in the novel is Randolph. I thought, I cannot let Randolph just give up. In the novel, the past is more powerful than the present. I didn't want to end in the present. It was being true to Randolph. I felt that his emotion was the one I wanted...