Babel TowerAmerica discovered A. S. Byatt when Possession, her Booker Prize-winning Victorian novel, was published here in 1990 and became one of the bestselling books of that year. Readers have been waiting ever since for her next full-length novel. Babel Tower is every bit as brilliant and ambitious as its predecessor, but with a more contemporary setting: the 1960s, a decade of turbulence and passionate ideals that Byatt uses to both frame and propel the lives of her characters. At the heart of the novel are two law cases that shape the story: a painful divorce and custody suit, and the prosecution of an "obscene" book. Frederica, the independent young heroine, is involved in both, and her personal and legal crises mirror those of the age. This is the decade of The Beatles, the Death of God, and the birth of computer languages. The resulting confusion, charted with a brilliant imaginative sympathy, is as comic as it is threatening and bizarre. |
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Alan Alan Melville Alexander asks Babbletower beautiful Begbie believe blood blue body Bran House Canon Holly child Colonel Grim colour Culvert D. H. Lawrence dark desire Desmond Bull eyes face feel Frederica says Frederica thinks friends George Murphy hair hand head hear Hefferson-Brough Hugh Pink human hurt Ian Brady imagine Jacqueline John Ottokar Jude Mason Lady Chatterley Lady Roseace language Leo Alexander light listen live look Magog Marcus married Moors Murders Myra Hindley never Oliphant passion perhaps Pippy Mammott pleasure Reiver round Rupert Parrott Samuel Palmer Saskia says Daniel says Frederica says Jude says Leo says Nigel sexual sits smell smile speak stares stone talk tell things thought tion told Tony Tony Watson Tower voice watches Wijnnobel Winifred woman women Women in Love words write young