Customer Reviews

Angels & Insects

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Shimmering beauty and shocking sensuality are the only phrases to adequately describe A.S. Byatt's Angels and Insects.

Although this novella really encompasses two distinct stories, my comments focus on Morpho Eugenia, my favorite of the two, and, in my opinion, by far the superior.

Set more than a century ago, in Victorian England, Angels and Insects (Morpho Eugenia) follows the life of William Adamson, a naturalist who has spent years of research in the jungles of South America.

A shipwreck sends him to the home of his benefactor, the Reverend Harald Alabaster, an amateur insect collector of enormous wealth.

Upon arriving at Alabaster's sumptuous country estate, poor William instantly falls in love with Alabaster's eldest daughter, Eugenia, a weak and wan, but still golden, beauty.

Although Eugenia appears to be out of his reach, William embarks upon a shy courtship and is more than a little surprised when his proposal of marriage is accepted. And, on their wedding night, the usually distant, aloof and somewhat mysterious Eugenia has even more surprises in store. Surprises William soon comes to savor.

Complicating matters is Eugenia's brother, a socially misfit snob who takes an instant dislike to William and talks incessantly of children who grow up sans the proper breeding...breeding poor William's genes cannot provide, of course.

Eugenia, herself, soon begins to show a darker side as her mood swings from lustful to ravenous to passionate to melancholy. Feeling a bit over his head in this baronial estate, William begins to experience somewhat of an attraction to his drab and dull, but very intelligent, assistant.

Angels and Insects is a fascinating book and, as always, Byatt lets us become intimately involved with her characters.

The real triumph though, lies in the book's symbolism. The Victorians were fascinated with the insect world and Byatt uses this fascination to refect the social order of the times: the women are doted on by servants as if they were queen bees and colonies of ants mirror the red and black jackets worn during a fox hunt.

Angels and Insects takes a fascinatingly intimate look at the quirkiest of families, one whose secrets and prejudices simply cannot be dismissed.

It is William's drab assistant who sums up the book's theme. "There are three kinds of people in this house: the visible, the invisible and the in between." Angels and Insects is a lyrically sensual portrait of the fascinating world of the in between.

Let me explain my 4 stars: I would have liked to give a 5-Star for "Morpho Eugenia" and a 3-Star for "Conjugal Angel." All the reviews here are correct in that A.S. Byatt is an amazing writer thoroughly versed in Victorian England. Her observation is keen and her prose style is assured. I can't really name another author besides Byatt who manages to weave narrative and intellectual discussion so seamlessly. The first of the two novellas, "Morpho Eugenia," is immediately appealing. I was hooked by the story very quickly through lush descriptions and how Byatt deftly sets up the conflict and character dynamics. I enjoyed "Conjugal Angel" much less. This one demands much more on the readers, especially if they are not familiar with Tennyson and Hallam. Even if you're a pro in Victorian poetry, you may find (as I did) the opening confusing in setting up the premise of the drama and introducing characters. The prose seems discursive and lacking in focus from time to time--very uneven. But you can't beat the nice surprise ending, almost conventional and (dare I use the word?) sentimental, Byatt's erudition notwithstanding. :-)

A.S. Byatt is best known for her lush, time-spanning historical romance "Possession." In "Angels and Insects: Two Novellas," Byatt revisits the intellectuals of the Victorian era. She dips into Victorian interests in spiritualism, insects, poetry and love -- not to mention their darker sides as well.

"Morpho Eugenia" introduces us to a young naturalist named William, who until recently had been studying insects in the Amazon. He was shipwrecked, then rescued by the wealthy Alabaster family. While continuing to study butterflies, he marries the beautiful eldest daughter Eugenia and for a time, lives the good life. The only problem is that unknown to him, Eugenia is wrapped up in a lifelong tangle of obsession and incest.

"The Conjugial Angel" introduces us to a group of mediums who gather to call up spirits. Mrs. Papagay is still in love with the dead Arturo. Emily mourns her dead lover, immortalized in her brother Alfred Tennyson's "In Memoriam" -- except she has married again. Now she struggles with her past emotions, her present doubts, and her longing to communicate with her love again.

As in her prior works, Byatt's writing is almost dizzily lush. She has a good sense of detail, describing ribbons, moths, butterfly wings, and the flames of gaslights. But pretty words are not all that Byatt has to offer -- she makes use of poetry (her own, and that of others), Darwinism and religious faith, Swedenborg, a family whose opulence covers their decay, and the nuances of love. Not to mention the dialogue: Eugenia's rambling explanation about her relationship with her brother is chilling.

Perhaps best of this collection is that Byatt has a fantastic grasp on period descriptions and dialogue -- it all sounds like a novel from the 19th centuy, with the polish of a modern book. Which is not to say that "Angels and Insects" is perfect. Byatt spends a little too much time on the moths and too little on the Alabaster family. And she's not at her best in "Conjugial Angel," which lacks the punch of the first novella. It's moving at the end, but takes awhile to get there.

Delving into such topics as survival of the fittest, poetry and love, Byatt produces a solid pair of novellas written in her usual sensuous prose. Despite some flaws that bog it down, this is a unique read.

A. S. Byatt's "The Conjugial Angel," second novella of Angels and Insects, masterfully and tenderly revives the story of Alfred Tennyson and his college friend and mentor, Arthur Hallam. The story looks into a spiritualist group which meets in the home of Emily Tennyson Jesse, Alfred's sister and Arthur's fiance at the time of his death, and although members of the group have individual desires and losses, the reader soon learns that one of their highest goals is to contact the spirit of Hallam. Emily, it seems, has unfinished business with him. She has felt overshadowed by her brother's public expression of grief in his grand poem In Memoriam; she has felt angry and seems to believe her life has been on "hold" since Hallam's death. It is true that she married Captain Jesse, but in so doing, she incurred expressions of disapproval from many including Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Hallam, too, has "issues," the chief being chained to earth by these grieving, unsettled people. One of the women of the seance group finally encounters Hallam in a horrible but artistically powerful scene, and they together also connect with Tennyson, now an old man. This is one of the book's tenderest scenes. Others include the narrator's presentation of the nineteenth-century's answer to Carlyle's question "What exactly is a miracle?" and another longed-for reunion of a wife and her husband, long assumed lost at sea. All in all, The Conjugial Angel is a tour de force, and yes, it is made sweeter if the reader is up on nineteenth-century literary history and a vulnerable reader of In Memoriam. I just taught this novella alongside In Memoriam in a course I called "Bronte et al. Today"; we also read Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea, and several other nineteenth-century classics with their contemporary "spins." It was exhilarating, and the Tennyson/Byatt pairing was as powerful as any other two. Byatt is deep, scholarly; she quotes a little poetry here, too--not nearly the amount used in Possession!--but the result is of sterling reading quality.

Readers who are familiar with Byatt's "Possession", may think at first glance that the two novellas offered in this book are nothing new. True, these novellas repeat some of the same elements, in setting and in theme: they are both explorations of the passionate lives of Victorian intellectuals. But these two short works are a revelation, marked by Byatt's distinctive blend of an ambitious curiosity to find out what makes people tick and a respect for the mysteries she uncovers. The first novella, "Morpho Eugenia", is the basis of the current movie "Angels and Insects". It starts from an ingenious premise: a Scottish naturalist, having spent years in the Amazonian jungle, is taken into a landed family, and uses his skills of observation and his knowledge of social insects to interpret this well-appointed hive. But ingenuity alone often wears thin after a few chapters; Byatt does not rely on this premise alone to carry the novella, but rather uses it to reveal the interactions between high-minded obsessions, such as science and theology, and the less consciously examined human habits of erotic attraction and snobbery. In fact, this novella could be described by the term one character offers to describe the project of the natural history of the ants: "the observation of the unknown world close to hand". The second novella, "The Conjugial Angel" is, in some ways, an even more amazing balancing act between the the ordinary and the mysterious. It uses the implicit parallel between seances and poetry, as two ways in which we try to understand the loss of love and try to regain what we have lost. Again, as with the ants in the first story, the temptation many authors would fall prey to, is to use spiritualism as an example of simple naivete and either romanticize it or dismiss it. Byatt makes poetry as much a heartfelt striving to repair loss as spiritualism is, and the seance as much an artful comment on human nature as poetry is. She both dissects and yet somehow leaves intact the mysteries of desire, intellect and art.

I have read several works by A.S. Byatt, and I must say that Angels and Insects is her best yet. Her understanding of romanticism literature and human emotions make this story seem real. It will make you cry, gasp, laugh, and scream without you knowing it either. I highly recommend this book to anybody who loves gothic, romanticism stories set in the 19th century with an intelligence all of its own. It makes you realize the imperfections of humans, even in the most prestiegest of families.

Two novellas, both set in Byatt's favorite period, the Victorian era. The first novella carried, in my opinion, the weaker second, but both are good reads. The first story was later shot as an NC17 movie. It is about a biologist who comes back to England after a decade in Brazil and begins to write his great work on the civilization of ants. He falls in love with the daughter of his host family and marries her. For several years all seems well, if slightly askew, somehow, to him, and at the end of the novella, we learn exactly what is wrong with life in that house and what has been wrong all along. (Slightly shocking, really, giving the unsuspecting tone to the plot that led up to it.) The second novella is about the late-Victorian mania with séances and spiritualism. In it a woman whose husband, captain of a whaling ship, is presumed drowned at sea, and she is encouraged by her sister to seek the aid of a noted medium. Both these novellas may easily be partaken of in a day, and make superb reading material for a long flight or rainy evening spent alone.

I bought this looking for more of A.S. Byatt based on some Amazon recommendations, so I must write it's NOT her best. Much better are Posession and the Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye. (excuse my typos; I've got a sleeping baby on my chest)

Morpho Eugenia (the first novella) details the post-shipwreck history of a destitute naturalist. When a wealthy family takes him in and he marries the oldest (Eugenia), he loses his autonomy in deference to all that money (doesn't that still happen all too often!) Luckily freedom prevails (and it's not even written by an American). Lots of interesting debates on the new theories of Darwin. Too many details on ant colonies, but you could be into that sort of thing...

The Conjugal Angel (second novella) tries to hook us with its associations to Swedenborg and Tennyson, but it has no substance on its own. BORING! Anyway, do modern readers care about Tennyson or know Swedenborg? For me the Swedenborg was cool because as a religion major, I studied mostly Christian Mysticism, but I realize the rest of you may not be so interested in obscurities.

Two novellas by Byatt, the author of a particular favorite book of mine, Possession. Both stories share some commonalties with that work: an historical setting made real through the use of documents (poems, stories) that signify the date of their creation by their style. Both stories are set in the past, near the turn of the 19th century. "Morpho Eugenia" (the insects of the title) is a little mystery story about a naturalist who has lost all of his specimens during a sea-wreck and is forced to work as a catalogist for a wealthy amateur, working through the amateur's bought samples. The naturalist is loosely based, it seems, on David Wallace, the co-discoverer of the theory of natural selection with Charles Darwin. He finds that his patron's family is nearly as interesting as nature, especially one young lady cocooned from the world. But cocoons hide things.

The second story is more like Possession in that it plays revisionistic (or maybe impressionistic) with Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and his sister Emily through the medium of a medium (that is, a clairvoyant). The point around which the story revolves is Arthur Hallem, the subject of Tennyson's "In Memoriam," a friend of his youth and the betrothed of his sister, who died on a sea voyage when Hallem was twenty-two. Emily, now married, has lingering doubts about her choice of marriage, wondering, if she should have, as her brother's poem snidely implies, spent her days in perpetual maidenhood. Are we destined to have only one soul mate, the other being with which we form 'the conjugal angel'?

Byatt's style is Byzantine. Her scholarship into literary istory has informed her pen to leak the century from its nib, and is not for those married to modernity. Yet her subjects are fresh and vibrant, pictured with painful clarity in the harshest of lights. Her characters ache in-between the lines.

...look to A.S. Byatt. Hers is a voice that carries you until the book's final pages. Having read Possession, Byatt has catapulted herself toward the writer of distinction that she truly is. I love Morpho Eugenia -- the words carried me. And even though The Conjugal Angel isn't as impressive as the first novella, the sensuous and lucid language is a work of art nevertheless. I have got to spread the word on this exceptional book! I hadn't expected the writing to move me so much. What more could I say other than the fact that this is an excellent piece of literature. Ms. Byatt, I applaud this marvelous effort...