Customer Reviews

A Whistling Woman

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Byatt offers huge challenges to the reader in this complex intellectual novel set in a university, a hospital for the insane, a religious commune, an Anti-University, and, finally, a London TV studio in the late 1960's. Continuing the lives of characters she has established earlier in Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, and Babel Tower, Byatt spends little time here developing them further or in creating an action-filled plot. Instead, she concentrates primarily on further developing the themes and philosophical questions which have occupied her earlier novels, using the characters and plot in an almost allegorical sense to illustrate these issues.

This is not light entertainment or escape reading. In the first hundred pages, Byatt introduces approximately forty characters, their roles, and their interrelationships, all of whom figure in the action in the novel. Frederica Potter, the main character in the previous novels, is the main character here, but other characters also receive close attention. All of these are deeply concerned with some aspect of memory, learning, creativity, or spirituality as it impacts issues of good and evil, reality, nature, love, and language.

Luk Lysgaard-Peacock and Jacqueline Winwar, engaged in pure science, are studying the population genetics of a variety of snail. Sir Gerard Wijnnobel, running the University of North Yorkshire, is planning an important Body-Mind Conference in which Hodder Pinsky, famous for cognitive psycho-linguistics and the use of computers to explore "the deep structure of linguistic competence" will debate Theobald Eichenbaum, a man who differs in his ideas of the learning process and of the growth of societies. Other characters include an institutionalized, charismatic visionary who practices Manichaeism, a sociologist who goes undercover at a secluded commune, several characters whose lives have been touched by violence, and a man working to destroy the traditional university system. Frederica herself, as hostess of a television program, "Through the Looking Glass," believes that the ability to change the world and its politics rests with the language of television, which "might take the place of the hearth in 19th century fiction."

Challenging and thoughtful, the novel is far more compelling in its ideas than its action, much of which is talked-about, rather than recreated. Long sections of academic papers, detailed letters between two researchers, the full agenda for the Mind-Body Conference, and descriptions of places and even furnishings severely limit the dramatic tension, however much they may illustrate the themes. Hugely conceived and richly imagined, this novel never lets up, giving the reader an intellectual workout rare in modern fiction. Mary Whipple

While reading A Whistling Woman, I kept wishing that more novelists wrote as well, as wonderfully, as A.S. Byatt. A Whistling Woman is a terrific novel, in my opinion almost as good as her phenomenal Possession. The story of Frederica Potter comes to a close (at least for us readers) at the end of the novel, and what a story it is--not for plotting reasons, but for how it is told. A Whistling Woman is an intelligently written, thoughtful and thought provoking novel of ideas focusing on one woman, Frederica, and a number of others who touch her life. Byatt shifts back and forth between plot lines and characters in a manner similar to Iris Murdoch. Like Murdoch, Byatt draws heavily from philisophical learning. All of the characters are highly intelligent and not afraid to show it. This is a wonderful, wonderful novel--one of the best I have read in quite some time. Enjoy!

This book is so much bigger than the pages it encompasses. Yes, it has a weak narrative arc compared with more popular fiction but the layers of metaphor and meaning enrich the story while the ending leaves all things possible. One word defines the core of this book. A word I had not heard before and one I looked up in the dictionary - Syzygy. This word means both "opposition" and "conjunction," and this is what this novel is all about. Opposite schools of thought and scholarly disciplines are seen to be in conjunction when discussed on Fredrica's TV show, the anti-university tries to be opposite to the real university but remains in conjunction in a weird way - it cannot survive as an anti-university without a university, the Ottaker Twins are in a strange syzygy dance throughout the novel and end up scarred by the same experience. Apart from this idea of conjunction and opposition, which I guess defined a lot of the sixties, there are many other wonderful literary games in the book. Fredrica's search for the meaning of metaphor plays a small but important part in our understanding of the whole while Bill Potter's epiphany about art is a fascinating place for this curmudgeon character to end up at. Philosophy is pitted against psychology, science against symbolism and love against destruction and everything ends up being linked at the end of the day. This is my favorite of the Fredrica books as I believe that A.S. Byatt has achieved more clarity here than ever before - or maybe I'm just getting it better!

A S Byatt's A Whistling Woman is a strange book. At one level it's a straightforward account of university life, with its politics, affairs and academic pursuit. But then there's the suspicion that none of this is ever satisfying for those involved. They yearn for something bigger, whilst at the same time trying to deny its significance in their lives. Another strand is the career of Federica, one of the book's principal characters. Almost by default, she finds herself host of a BBC2-style arts review or in-depth discussion. She is forced via the subject matter of her programmes to re-examine a whole host of assumptions. So while the scientists try to identify a mechanism by which memory is both stimulated and fixed by means of electrical stimulation, Federica, via her television shows, offers apparently ever more arcane subject matter, leaving us confused as to what we think we might believe - or even remember.

And these are just some of the strands of plot and characterisation in A Whistling Woman, certainly one of the more complex novels I have read in many years. I have not read the previous three works in the series. This may have been why I found a number of loose ends that seemed to have strayed and frayed from elsewhere.

And then there's the alternative university that establishes itself near to the conventional campus of the University of North Yorkshire, whose acronym, obviously, is UNY, implying generality. The alternative people adopt true nineteen sixties postures, preferring question to answer, experience to knowledge, heuristics to instruction. When we recall this hippy, flower power, professedly liberated, free thinking era, it is wise to bear in mind that this is also the generation that elected Ronald Reagan, tolerated support for death squads in central America and fuelled the consumer boom of the later eighties. But at the time, these revolutionaries sought something transcendent in their anti-university and found it in a self-destructing religious sect.

But no matter what people profess, no matter what they research, they still sleep with one another, still get pregnant, still need mutual support. The 1960s complicated all of these things with a superimposed need for personal, transcendental fulfilment and expression, whilst, at the same time, destroying perhaps permanently any possible recourse to established religion. In A Whistling Woman, A S Byatt captures this confusion and dissects it, but she offers us no neat packages of analysis, no simple results by which we might identify its elements.

I am as always amazed at A.S Byatt's ability to draw a reader into her works and create such a moving and often shocking story that makes you think so much on the world and how history can indeed repeat itself.

As always, the novel centers on Frederica Potter and her life, as well as a whole host of amazing new themes on religion, communication, true madness, and relationships.

Byatt has obviously been setting up religion as a key element since The Virgin in the Garden, but it truly strikes with dire consequences in this story. I don't want to give too much away; but Byatt fully explores how religion can go from being a lifeline and a savior, to something dark and horrible. Of course, this ties right in with what madness truly contains--as well as the fact of how communication can be skewered with those we know so well.

Of probably all the novels in the quartet, this is the one that focuses the most and brings to light the themes I have just mentioned. It results in a moving and often dark story, but a story that amazes.

One thing that I really enjoyed about this novel and that I applaud Byatt for is that in the other three, her pages were swarmed with intellectual references and characters rattling off metaphors from Proust and Mallarme at every second. Here, this has reduced drastically; as Byatt has left us to decipher literary references for ourselves instead of trying to cram them down our throats. This both makes her characters much more real and also gives the novel a more comfortable in its' own skin feeling.

Another thing I loved is that Byatt can indeed write and hold the reader's attention for hours. She occasionally has small "humps" where the plot drags instead of soars, but when she gets out of the mud I am in awe of the richness of her words and how you are transported to the turbulent sixties. Her sentence structure is as always, beautifully crafted with perfect flow.

The only reason I knocked off half a star is because at times I wished the novel had stayed more focused on just the immediate Potter family instead of jumping all over the place with less relevant characters. I have really missed Bill, Winifred, Marcus, and Daniel not being main characters in the last two books and I would have liked to have seen them more. I know that Byatt is trying to symbolize that when Stephanie died, the family also died with her in a sense but I did miss everyone nonetheless.

I read the entire series from June-August and the Potter family have been amazing companions for me over the summer. I have gotten to know these chracters so well that it feels as if they are not just words on a page, but very good friends of mine. I am so glad that I stumbled across this series while looking for something to read on a plane trip and I will miss the escapades of Frederica and everyone else very much in the future.

Out of the four; The Virgin in the Garden is my absolute favorite followed closely by A Whistling Woman. If you truly want some great reading that will transport you to a new world, pick up this series next time at the bookstore!

Let me start off by saying that this is my least favorite of the A.S. Byatt novels that I have read. Let me also state that "Possession" is one of my top 5 most loved books ever! That being said, it never ceases to amaze me the great store of knowledge that Ms. Byatt is able to accrue for her novels, particularly for this one: the sex life of slugs and snails, the Bible, the theory of evolution, the science of genetics, amongst others. And she integrates this knowledge seamlessly in this novel.

However, at times, I found myself a bit frustrated by the amount of intellectual material that was in this book, which came at the expense of good, dramatic flow. I did not find this the case in "Possession," "Babel Tower," or "Angels and Insects." On the plus side, as in most Robert Altman movies, there is a large crew of characters and events that are all brought together and resolved rather nicely. Byatt's sheer mastery of the novel definitely comes through in this regard. I just wish that there had been a bit less of what were long, detailed passages on religion and science.

A. S. Byatt's work can be excellent. Her short stories are really marvelous, and "Possession" was a wonder - full of life and characters and plot. In the series that is capped by this novel, I continue to find "The Virgin in the Garden" an outstanding work and "Still Life" quite remarkable. However, "A Whistling Woman" is too large, it covers too many topics, too much history and too much science (done without any spirit) and too many stories. The period explored by the novel certainly encompassed all these things, but why did the novel try to do the same. Should not the novelist sift through and bring forth something that crystallizes the period, rather than load the reader with details and leave us wondering at the end why we plowed through such a "big" book only to find a clueless, pregnant Frederica. The work loses focus, flattens characters and in the end finishes rather lamely - dead characters either we hardly knew or from whom we expected more; live characters who have disappeared into clichés, and romances that even the author seems reluctant to accept. I have to admit, the energy of the 60s does seem to have ended in pregnant 70s girls in Laura Ashley dresses, but I do think that Byatt should have left this novel to sit for awhile, and come back to it after a little reflection, crafting a finer piece, which her readers deserve. Let's hope now that Byatt has the series behind her, she will be freed to write a more wonderful work.

I loved reading about the philosophical and intellectual musings of the Porter family in The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life and Babel Tower and had looked forward to reading A Whistling Woman. I know that this is the final installment in this wonderful series and I held out on reading it because I had wanted to savor these wonderful offerings for as long as I could. A Whistling Woman is one interesting and enthralling novel! Set in London during the late 1960s, this fourth novel centers mostly on Federica Potter's chic talk show and its various topics on literature, politics, feminism, among other things. The novel also introduces a plethora of new characters and their various intellectual insights and findings. There are various twists throughout the novel as Federica once again regales us with her strong, feminist views.

This novel, unlike the previous three, had a slow start for me. It also came across as too bloated with all of those new characters and topics. But A.S. Byatt pulled it off well and the novel became riveting afterwards. I particularly loved how the topic of how the human brain was made for the body instead for reason had been delved into with so many thought-provoking views and personal philosophies. I could get into so many subjects this novel got into-but I am afraid of spoiling it for the potential reader. This is the sort of book that you read and then discuss with a group of friends or fellow bibliophiles. The final chapter of this enlightening quartet did not disappoint me. I will miss Federica and the rest of the Potter family. My only hope is that A.S. Byatt continues to deliver wonderful books in the future.

I can't begin to tell you how much your Frederica quartet has meant to me personally. About 15 years ago I read Still Life which I thought was the saddest, most beautiful book I had ever read. I saw you in person right afterward at the Tattered Cover in Denver;I don't remember what I said to you, but it was something complimentary because after reading Possession, you were then one of my favorites. I went back and read the Virgin in the Garden and I knew I would be hooked for the whole series. Babel Tower was challenging book, but I was hungry for more details about the Potter family that I felt like I knew which you rendered with such honesty and feeling.This was a family I identified with and understood from the beginning. And now with A Whistling Woman, having finished it, I am in a complete state of grief because you appear to be finished with this family. You started with a small family living in an insular existence in the country, followed them in the next work to the enlargement of their lives as the young adults expanded their world in the university. The death of Stephanie overwhelmed me with grief--you didn't hold back. You told the truth. I sobbed so hard I couldn't even see the page. Then Frederica moved on to try to make something of her life in her world which had expanded even more to include all of Britain. Frederica married the wrong man and had to suffer the consequences. So this last of the four really moved me. The action in a way completes the circle by focusing so much on the north in the University there where intellectual life takes all to intellectual heights by focusing on philosophy and science.. It's the late 60's and so many women are trying to find the right path for them--not just Frederica but also Ruth, Brenda, Lucy, Jacquelyn, Eva. They are the Whistling Women of your opening myth, women who are intelligent and sensitive and aspiring whom others don't especially want to listen to. Because of their newly found freedom they can do with their lives mostly what they wish if only they knew what to do, but now they are more responsible for their fates than women have ever been.

What moved me so much about these works is your total honesty. People in the books and readers don't especially like Frederica because she is sharp and self-centered, but she really is every woman who is criticized for her intelligence and who has to struggle to know herself. But I was also moved by the references in the book to the departed Stephanie and the lingering of grief and the memorabilia that harkened back to Frederica's girlhood . (How dare those ignorant students destry that beautiful house and those Elizabethan costumes!) The scene of her daughter Mary playing in Shakespeare's tale is a masterpiece of understatement. The context provided by the other 3 books make simple scenes of grief reverberate here as if they were my own family history. Your brilliance has allowed you to create an entire world almost in real time. Thank you.

This last book was difficult but who else other than you has the vast knowledge to stimulate our thought so deeply. Oh, by the way, Luk's ideas about the unnecessary male (biologically speaking)--I kept wanting to shout out "hybrid vigor" as the answer. It's a minor point.

My last point has to do with Harry Potter. I read your essay about Harry Potter (July 7, 203) in the New York Times and I agree that adults who read him perhaps have unresolved childhood conflicts. I want to recommend to others your "Little Black Book of Stories." These hair-raising tales are totally adult and would provide much more mystery, different worlds, originality, fright, and something to think about than Harry Potter ever could.

This book is almost as good as her book, Possession, which I thought was one of the most brilliant books I'd ever read.