Babel Tower

[lunabee34]

Babel Tower by A.S. Byatt

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I love this book. I have loved each book in this series more than the previous book. Babel Tower was a quicker read for me than the others, I think because Frederica has a real, tangible problem rather than an existential one (although it is that as well). She's married a man who keeps her shut away in a country house; he won't let her visit her friends or work, and when she finally tries to do both those things, he turns violent. I never realized how difficult it was to obtain a divorce in England as late as the 60s. I just kept being astonished by how Frederica wants what seems absolutely normal to me--to work and be married and have a kid, to be allowed to exercise her intellectual abilities, to have autonomy and agency--but which is so hard won in the the time period in which she lives. Her realization that she loves her child deeply and fiercely while also being limited by him and resentful of the way he causes others to impose their expectations on her rings very, very true to me.

The other main plot point is the publication of a book and its subsequent trial for obscenity. I won't say too much on that because the identity of the author is a bit of a mystery at first, but it's very well done.

Very much looking forward to the final installment in this series.



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Comments

[kore]

Oh, so glad you liked it!

[lunabee34]

OMG I really did.

I didn't want to be too spoilery in my review, but I just detested Nigel. The way he lied about her in the trial and then got away with it too! *rage*

I like Frederica more and more as the series goes on and identify with her pretty hard. I can't believe we're not so far away from a time when the struggles she faces were routine; I know that women still face a lot of judgement about being mothers vs. professionals and that certain conservative groups think a mom is all a woman should be etc., but nothing like what she went through.

The way she thinks about her son rings really true to me. They are these amazing beings that you made, that grew inside you, their creation the closest to God humans can ever be; in some ways they ARE you and yet they aren't. And you love them and love them and love them and it's frightening and overwhelming. And they also take shit from you and reduce you to a label and limit your life and are horrible company for years on end until they stop being mere takers and can give something back. That mixture of love and resentment is perfect.

I feel like all the other characters were extremely tangential to Frederica in this one, just bits of their stories while mostly focusing on hers. We did a get an extended look at Daniel to start with when his daughter was in a coma (I was prepared to rage quit if the child died but fortunately that was not necessary LOL).

[kore]

Frederica is a REALLY amazing self-portrait, or just portrait, and there ought to be critical studies done of how she changes from book to book. The experiences she goes through are like the stories you hear from your mother or grandmother or aunties about How Bad Things Were Then and you can't quite believe it, but it happened. But her dreadful imprisonment (basically) at the house is Gothic too, IIRC, and I remember being very moved when her guys show up to rescue her. -- I haven't reread the book in a long time. I remember the Babbletower bits being rather controversial when it first came out, and people were like, Dear sweet poetry-writing A.S. "Possession" Byatt wrote this thing? Why? But it's so good.

Daniel also really grabbed my heart in a way I didn't expect him to. Byatt is quite good at that.

I really didn't like Whistling Woman that much, altho maybe that was also me and I haven't reread the book in quite a while either. I'll be interested to know what you think of it. I think I enjoyed BT so much a WW letdown was inevitable, but that's really not an objective viewpoint.

[lunabee34]

I've started WW, and like it so far but nothing has really happened of yet.

The plot line that's grabbing me so far is the one introduced at the very end of BT, that Leo can't really read. It's resonating pretty strongly with me because one of the things I've often thought about is how I would react if my kids weren't smart or interested in succeeding academically. I think it would be really hard for me to deal with, and Frederica struggling to help her son learn to read is really poignant.

[china_shop]

I loved Possession, but when I tried this (long, long ago) I couldn't finish it because some of the descriptions of torture devices freaked me out. I still remember them even now, whereas I have no recollection at all of the plot. ;-P

[kore]

....hahaha, that book within a book was VIVID, wasn't it.

[lunabee34]

And yet, not nearly as vivid as I expected.

I mean, for all the allegations of obscenity, Byatt doesn't actually show us any scenes which *are* obscene, which I think is really clever on her part. Characters allude to those scenes but we don't get to read them.

[kore]

Yes, she lets you fill it in using your imagination, like Stephen King says about horror radio shows ("You throw open the door and there's a ten-foot bug. The audience screams. But secretly they're thinking, 'A ten-foot bug? Okay, I can handle that. But now if it had been a twenty-foot bug....'")

I was really amazed by Jude. I started out just loathing him, and had this amazing feeling of sympathy -- empathy I guess -- toward him by the end of the book.

I thought for sure I had done review-by-updates on Goodreads, but I can't find it with google, and I haven't logged in there for years and have no desire to anymore.

[lunabee34]

*Nods nods*

At first, he's just this weirdo who seems to have nothing redeeming about him. I mean, he spends most of the novel naked and wearing ratty clothes and utterly filthy and stinky and saying the most provocative things, and then you slowly realize how dignified he is and how serious and how damaged he is from his childhood. The end where he's in Daniel's house and he's clean and in clean pajamas and Daniel's like, okay time to go do something, Jude, was so wonderful. I had a lot of sympathy/empathy for him at the end too.

[lunabee34]

Heeeeeeee. There's one in particular that's, ah, pretty memorable.

If you started with this one, I think it probably also didn't work because it's the third of a series; I tried reading this one cold a long time ago too and noped out because I hadn't read the first two.

[sallymn]

Sounds like another for the to-read pile...

[lunabee34]

Yes! But you must start at the beginning of the series or else this one won't mean as much.

[chelseagirl]

I loved this one because of all the legal issues in it. (I have read this series but so long ago that it's not fresh for me -- but this one more recently than the others. Didn't actually realize there was a last one -- hate the way academia weirdly keeps me from keeping up with, uh, books.)

[lunabee34]

Yes! The legal issues are fascinating. Something being prosecuted for obscenity now seems absurd. LOL

I know what you mean re: academia. You've really only got time to read the stuff you're teaching.