Gillians' mom and dad, MaryLee and Alec Robertson, are dear friends of ours, and when Gillian was a ninth grader in Eastern Junior High, she was a star student of mine. We've stayed in touch throughout her years at Williams, and Michael and I were delighted to dance the night away at Gillian's wedding to James Molesworth. We all wore hats to the wedding, as they do in the UK!
Gillian and James live in Cornwall with their two little children. Gillian writes a monthly column called "Across the Pond" for the WESTERN MORNING NEWS, a newspaper in Plymouth. Last year at this time, her column was about Halloween in America, and in January she wrote about her memories of voting. Clearly, she's a gifted journalist and observer. I've been encouraging (really pestering) her to compile her columns into a book, a la Anna Quindlan. Mary Lee borrowed my galley of AS BYATT'S THE CHILDREN'S BOOK and was quite lukewarm in her response. Here's Gillian's response to the book:
______________

THE downside of having a really good book to read is that you have to finish it. I've been putting this off for days. After reading voraciously, compulsively, even unwisely (i.e. staying up until the wee small hours with aching eyes and cramped neck, curled up in a cold sitting room while everyone else snores upstairs), I suddenly found myself with only a sliver of pages left.
Last night I had to do it. I finished. It was like losing a friend.
The book in question is The Children's Book by A S Byatt, who also wrote the bestselling Possession, the scholarly past-meets-present love saga that came out in 1990. Possession, true to its title, reached out a ghostly hand and grabbed both my mind and heart from the first paragraph. Such books are to be approached with caution.
It's true that The Children's Book took a little longer to get going than Possession. It is dense, long, and in the words of one reviewer, "unapologetically intellectual". You can't flit in and out, but must compose yourself to give it your whole attention for good chunks of time. It's a book that takes investment - but you can tell it will pay dividends in the end.
This concept is hard to explain to those who prefer a snappy paperback. "Why would you read something that takes so much work?" I am asked.
All the best things take work. An easy read only gets you an easy pleasure: it occupies your mind while the book is in your hands, and dissolves the minute you put it down.
Good fiction stimulates you on a deeper level. It even troubles you. You can't stop thinking about it. You review it over and over in your mind: lying in bed before falling asleep, or driving in the car. Bothered by particular scenes, you tease out their meaning. It gets under your skin, and teaches you something.
The Children's Book takes place at the turn of the 19th century. A proper saga, it explores the fortunes of a cast of characters, based around the South coast of Kent.
Here are some of the characters you follow: an authoress who supports a large family writing tales of lore and fantasy; a stormy genius potter whose Pre-Raphaelite model wife is addicted to laudanum; a young boy, escaped from the potteries of the Midlands, who hides in the Victoria and Albert museum to learn a craft beyond his means; a German puppeteer, an ineffective sufragette, a banker, a spinster aunt with a secret, a seducer, a Cambridge sophistocate, two victims of incest and a boy who wouldn't grow up.
A good author, in my estimation, grounds a story in place and in fact, but looks at them with new eyes. There's been a lot written about people in this period, and character stereotypes we have come to expect. A S Byatt is fiercely original.
Around these characters and many more crash the tides of the Fabian society and political events, the Arts and Crafts movement, bohemianism, love, social class, the meaning of womanhood and family: until the whole thing is exploded in unexpected ways by the First World War.
Masterfully she shows how the real world is layered with the imaginary worlds we create: through art, through social constructs like class and family. She punctures them like bubbles and makes them bleed one into another, co-dependants. It is truly dazzling, a work of craftsmanship.

I realise I've just used a personal column to write a book review. I'm not sorry. I've come to understand that books like this don't come along very often. When they do, like the Ancient Mariner, you are compelled to grab people by the shirtfront and say: "Read this book. It's wonderful. It's changed me. You have to read it".
Unlike the poor Ancient Mariner, a journalist can do this in bulk.