Print List Price: | $22.00 |
Kindle Price: | $12.99 Save $9.01 (41%) |
Sold by: | Random House LLC Price set by seller. |
Your Memberships & Subscriptions
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
OK
Audible sample Sample
The Children's Book (Vintage International) Kindle Edition
A spellbinding novel, at once sweeping and intimate, from the Booker Prize–winning author of Possession, that spans the Victorian era through the World War I years, and centers around a famous children’s book author and the passions, betrayals, and secrets that tear apart the people she loves.
When Olive Wellwood’s oldest son discovers a runaway named Philip sketching in the basement of the new Victoria and Albert Museum—a talented working-class boy who could be a character out of one of Olive’s magical tales—she takes him into the storybook world of her family and friends.
But the joyful bacchanals Olive hosts at her rambling country house—and the separate, private books she writes for each of her seven children—conceal more treachery and darkness than Philip has ever imagined. As these lives—of adults and children alike—unfold, lies are revealed, hearts are broken, and the damaging truth about the Wellwoods slowly emerges. But their personal struggles, their hidden desires, will soon be eclipsed by far greater forces, as the tides turn across Europe and a golden era comes to an end.
Taking us from the cliff-lined shores of England to Paris, Munich, and the trenches of the Somme, The Children’s Book is a deeply affecting story of a singular family, played out against the great, rippling tides of the day. It is a masterly literary achievement by one of our most essential writers.
From the Hardcover edition.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherVintage
- Publication dateOctober 5, 2009
- File size3378 KB
Customers who bought this item also bought
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Bookmarks Magazine
Review
“Majestic . . . Dazzling . . . Wonderful . . . . What you see here . . . is the strength and fire of Byatt’s imagination.” —The San Francisco Chronicle
“Bristling with life and invention. . . . A seductive work by an extraordinarily gifted writer.” —The Washington Post
“[Byatt’s] magnum opus. . . . Lushly detailed. . . . Every stitch of this tapestry is connected to the whole.” —The Seattle Times
“[A] masterpiece. . . . Her best yet.” —Newsday
“[A] ravishing epic. . . . This is a classic Byatt fusion of fact and uncannily luscious imagery, mixed in the ideal proportions: not too hot, not too cold—just right.” —Salon
“A stunning achievement: a novel of ideas that crackles with passion, energy and emotive force. . . . I did not want The Children’s Book to end . . . I wanted more of this ambitious, compelling novel, certainly Byatt’s best since Possession, and possibly her best ever.” —Patricia Hagen, Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Unforgettable. . . . Eloquent. . . . Majestic and immensely ambitious . . . with masterly skill and literary tact. . . . A monument of a novel.” —The New York Review of Books
“Supremely fulfilling . . . wondrous . . . rich with period detail and sublime storytelling. . . . A mesmerizing exploration of, well, everything: families, secrets, love, innocence, corruption, art, the desire for knowledge, nature, politics, war, sex, power. Even puppetry.” —The Miami Herald
“Spellbinding. . . . Alive . . . Potent. . . . Byatt is a master storyteller.” —O, The Oprah Magazine
“Sweeping. . . . A literary feast. . . . Byatt fills a huge canvas with the ...
About the Author
From the Hardcover edition.
From The Washington Post
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Julian Cain was at home in the South Kensington Museum. His father, Major Prosper Cain, was Special Keeper of Precious Metals.
Julian was just fifteen, and a boarder at Marlowe School, but was home recovering from a nasty bout of jaundice. He was neither tall nor short, slightly built, with a sharp face and a sallow complexion, even without the jaundice. He wore his straight black hair parted in the centre, and was dressed in a school suit. Tom Wellwood, boyish in Norfolk jacket and breeches, was about two years younger, and looked younger than he was, with large dark eyes, a soft mouth and a smooth head of dark gold hair. The two had not met before. Tom's mother was visiting Julian's father, to ask for help with her research. She was a successful authoress of magical tales. Julian had been deputed to show Tom the treasures. He appeared to be more interested in showing him the squatting boy.
"I said I'd show you a mystery."
"I thought you meant one of the treasures."
"No, I meant him. There's something shifty about him. I've been keeping an eye on him. He's up to something."
Tom was not sure whether this was the sort of make-believe his own family practised, tracking complete strangers and inventing stories about them. He wasn't sure if Julian was, so to speak, playing at being responsible.
"What does he do?"
"He does the Indian rope trick. He disappears. Now you see him, now you don't. He's here every day. All by himself. But you can't see where or when he goes."
They sidled along the wrought-iron gallery, which was hung with thick red velvet curtains. The third boy stayed where he was, drawing intently. Then he moved his position, to see from another angle. He was hay-haired, shaggy and filthy. He had cut-down workmen's trousers, with braces, over a flannel shirt the colour of smoke, stained with soot. Julian said
"We could go down and stalk him. There are all sorts of odd things about him. He looks very rough. He never seems to go anywhere but here. I've waited at the exit to see him leave, and follow him, and he doesn't seem to leave. He seems to be a permanent fixture."
The boy looked up, briefly, his grimy face creased in a frown. Tom said
"He concentrates."
"He never talks to anyone that I can see. Now and then the art students look at his drawings. But he doesn't chat to them. He just creeps about the place. It's sinister."
"Do you get many robberies?"
"My father always says the keepers are criminally casual with the keys to the cases. And there are heaps and heaps of stuff lying around waiting to be catalogued, or sent to Bethnal Green. It would be terribly easy to sneak off with things. I don't even know if anyone would notice if you did, not with some of the things, though they'd notice quickly enough if anyone made an attempt on the Candlestick."
"Candlestick?"
"The Gloucester Candlestick. What he seems to be drawing, a lot of the time. The lump of gold, in the centre of that case. It's ancient and unique. I'll show it to you. We could go down, and go up to it, and disturb him." Tom was dubious about this. There was something tense about the third boy, a tough prepared energy he didn't even realise he'd noticed.
However, he agreed. He usually agreed to things. They moved, sleuthlike, from ambush to ambush behind the swags of velvet. They went under Prince Albert, out onto the turning stone stairs, down to the South Court. When they reached the Candlestick, the dirty boy was not there.
"He wasn't on the stairs," said Julian, obsessed.
Tom stopped to stare at the Candlestick. It was dully gold. It seemed heavy. It stood on three feet, each of which was a long-eared dragon, grasping a bone with grim claws, gnawing with sharp teeth. The rim of the spiked cup that held the candle was also supported by open-jawed dragons with wings and snaking tails. The whole of its thick stem was wrought of fantastic foliage, amongst which men and monsters, centaurs and monkeys, writhed, grinned, grimaced, grasped and stabbed at each other. A helmeted, gnomelike being, with huge eyes, grappled the sinuous tail of a reptile. There were other human or kobold figures, one
in particular with long draggling hair and a mournful gaze. Tom thought immediately that hismotherwould need to see it. He tried, and failed, to memorise the shapes. Julian explained. It had an interesting history, he said. No one knew exactly what it was made of. It was some kind of gilt alloy. Itwas probable that it had been made in Canterbury—modelled in wax and cast—but apart from the symbols of the evangelists on the knop, it appeared not to be made for a religious use. It had turned up in the cathedral in Le Mans, from where it had disappeared during the French Revolution. A French antiquary had sold it to the Russian Prince Soltikoff. The South KensingtonMuseum had acquired it from his collection in 1861. There was nothing, anywhere, like it.
Tom did not know what a knop was, and did not know what the symbols of the evangelists were. But he saw that the thing was a whole world of secret stories. He said his mother would like to see it. It might be just what she was looking for. He would have liked to touch the heads of the dragons.
Julian was looking restlessly around him. There was a concealed door, behind a plaster cast of a guarding knight, on a marble plinth. It was slightly ajar, which he had never seen before. He had tried its handle, and it was always, as it should be, since it led down to the basement storerooms and workrooms, locked.
"I bet he went down there."
"What's down there?"
"Miles and miles of passages and cupboards and cellars, and things being moulded, or cleaned, or just kept. Let's stalk him."
There was no light, beyond what was cast on the upper steps from the door they had opened. Tom did not like the dark. He did not like transgression. He said "We can't see where we're going."
"We'll leave the door open a crack."
"Someone may come and lock it. We may get into trouble."
"We won't. I live here."
They crept down the uneven stone steps, holding a thin iron rail. At the foot of the staircase they found themselves cut off by a metal grille, beyond which stretched a long corridor, now vaguely visible as though there was a light-source at the other end. The passage was roofed with Gothic vaulting, like a church crypt, but finished in white glazed industrial bricks. Julian gave the grille an irritated shake and it swung open. He observed that this, too, should have been locked. Someone was in for trouble.
The passage opened into a dusty vault, crammed with a crowd of white effigies, men, women and children, staring out with sightless eyes. Tom thought they might be prisoners in the underworld, or even the damned. They were closely packed; the boys had to worm their way between them. Beyond this funereal chamber, two corridors branched. There was more light to the left, so they went that way, negotiated another unlocked grille, and found themselves in a treasure-house of vast gold and silver vessels, croziers, eagle-winged lecterns, fountains, soaring angels and grinning cherubs. "Electrotypes," whispered the knowledgeable Julian. A faint but steady light rippled over the metal, through little glass roundels let into the brickwork. Julian put his finger
to his lips and hissed to Tom to keep still. Tom steadied himself against a silver galleon, which clanged. He sneezed.
"Don't do that."
"I can't help it. It's the dust."
They crept on, took a left, took a right, had to force their way between thickets of what Tom thought were tomb railings, surmounted by jaunty female angel-busts,with wings and pointed breasts. Julian said they were cast-iron radiator covers, commissioned from an ironmaster in Sheffield. "Cost a packet, down here because someone thought they were obtrusive," he whispered. "Which way now?"
Tom said he had no idea. Julian said they were lost, no one would find them, rats would pick their bones. Someone sneezed. Julian said
"I told you, don't do that."
"I didn't. It must have been him."
Tom was worried about hunting down a probably harmless and innocent boy. He was also worried about encountering a savage and
dangerous boy.
Julian cried "We knowyou're there. Come out and give yourself up!"
He was alert and smiling, Tom saw, the successful seeker or catcher in games of pursuit.
There was a silence. Another sneeze. A slight scuffling. Julian and
Tom turned to look down the other fork of the corridor, which was obstructed by a forest of imitation marble pillars, made to support busts or vases. A wild face, under a mat of hair, appeared at knee height, framed between fake basalt and fake obsidian.
"You'd better come out and explain yourself," said Julian, with complete certainty. "You're trespassing. I should get the police."
The third boy came out on all fours, shook himself like a beast, and stood up, supporting himself briefly on the pillars. He was about Julian's height. He was shaking, whether with fear or wrath Tom could not tell. He pushed a dirty hand across his face, rubbing his eyes, which even in the gloom could be seen to be red-rimmed. He put his head down, and tensed. Tom saw the thought go through him, he could charge the two of them, head-butt them and flee down the corridors. He didn't move and didn't answer.
"What are you doing down here?" Julian insisted.
"I were hiding."
"Why? Hiding from who?"
"Just hiding. I were doing no harm. I move carefully. I don't disturb things."
"What's your name? Where do you live?"
"My name's Philip. Philip Warren. I suppose I live here. At present."
His voice was vaguely north country.Tomrecognised it, but couldn't place it. He was looking at them much as they were looking at him, as though he couldn't quite grasp that they were real. He blinked, and a tremor ran through him. Tom said
"You were drawing the Candlestick. Is that what you came for?"
"Aye."
He was clutching a kind of canvas satchel against his chest, which presumably contained his sketching materials. Tom said
"It's an amazing thing, isn't it? I hadn't seen it before."
The other boy looked him in the eye, then, with a flicker of a grin.
"Aye. Amazing, it is."
Julian spoke severely.
"You must come and explain yourself to my father."
"Oh, your father. Who's he, then?"
"He's Special Keeper of Precious Metals."
"Oh. I see."
"You must come along with us."
"I see I must. Can I get my things?"
"Things?" Julian sounded doubtful for the first time. "You mean, you've been living down here?"
"S'what I said. I got nowhere else to go. I'd rather not sleep on t'streets. I come here to draw. I saw the Museum was for workingmen to see well-made things. I mean to get work, I do, and I need drawings to show . . . I like these things."
"Can we see the drawings?" asked Tom.
"Not in this light. Upstairs, if you're interested. I'll get my things, like I said."
He ducked, and began to make his way back amongst the pillars, crouching and weaving expertly. Tom was put in mind of dwarves in mine-workings, and, since his upbringing was socially conscientious, of children in mines, pulling trucks on hands and knees. Julian was on Philip's heels. Tom followed.
"Come in," said the grimy boy, at the opening of a small storeroom, making a welcoming gesture, possibly mocking, with an arm. The storeroom contained what appeared to be a small stone hut, carved and ornamented with cherubim and seraphim, eagles and doves, acanthus and vines. It had its own little metal gate, with traces of gilding on the rusting iron.
"Convenient," said Philip. "It has a stone bed. I took the liberty of borrowing some sacks to keep warm. I'll put 'em back, naturally, where I found them."
"It's a tomb or shrine," said Julian. "Russian, by the look of it. There must have been some saint on that table, in a glass case or a reliquary.
He might still be in there, underneath, his bones that is, if he wasn't incorrupt."
"I haven't noticed him," said Philip, flatly. "He hasn't bothered me."
Tom said "Are you hungry? What do you eat?"
"Once or twice I got to help in the tea-room, moving plates and washing them. People leave a lot on their plates, you'd be surprised. And the young ladies from the Art School took notice of my drawings and sometimes they passed me a sandwich. I don't beg. I did steal one, once, when I was desperate, an egg-and-cress sandwich. I were pretty sure the
young lady had no intention of eating it."
He paused.
"It isn't much," he said. "I'm hungry, yes."
He was rummaging behind the tomb in the shrine, and came out with another canvas satchel, a sketch-book, a candle stub and what looked like a roll of clothing, tied with string.
"How did you get in?" Julian persisted.
"Followed the horses and carts. You know, they turn in and drive down a ramp into these underground parts. And they unload and pack things with a deal of bustle, and it's easy enough to mingle wi' them, wi' the carters and lads, and get in."
"And the upstairs door?" Julian queried. "Which is meant to be locked at all times."
"I came across a little key."
"Came across?"
"Aye. Came across. I'll give it back. Here, take it."
Tom said
"It must be horribly frightening, down here alone at night."
"Not near so frightening as t'streets in t'East End. Not near."
Julian said "Please come with me now. You must come and explain all this to my father. He's talking to Tom's mother. This is Tom. Tom Wellwood. I'm Julian Cain."
From the Hardcover edition.
From AudioFile
Product details
- ASIN : B002PMVY2Y
- Publisher : Vintage; 1st edition (October 5, 2009)
- Publication date : October 5, 2009
- Language : English
- File size : 3378 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 898 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #595,633 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #619 in Literary Sagas
- #657 in Metaphysical Fiction
- #1,394 in Metaphysical & Visionary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonReviews with images
-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
The novel opens in what would become the Victoria and Albert Museum, where a young boy, Philip Warren, a runaway from child labor in the potteries, has taken refuge in a hidden chamber in the labyrinthine basement, emerging only to draw the objects on display -- for despite his early experiences, he has an acute eye and a love for well-made things. He attracts the attention of Olive Wellwood, a children's book author who has come to the museum seeking inspiration, and she takes him to stay with her family at Todefright in Kent (wonderful name!). Olive is a refugee from a mining community herself, and many of her stories are about dispossessed children and underground realms, so Philip's situation strikes a chord. He arrives in time for the Wellwoods' Midsummer party, where he will meet the large cast of children (and as many adults) whose lives will be followed over the next 650 pages.
Although beginning in the Victorian age, this is the 1890s, the end of the century. The novel's characters are not merchant princes and defenders of Empire, but artists, craftsmen, eccentrics, socialists, suffragists, pamphleteers, and nature worshipers. Byatt precisely evokes the liberal fringe of society reacting against Victorian industrialization, militarism, and commerce -- especially through the making of art. Philip, for instance, is soon introduced to Benedict Fludd, a temperamental genius who runs a pottery in the desolate Romney Marshes, where the boy gets a chance to produce original work of his own. Byatt, who taught at an art school in earlier life, has long had an interest in the visual arts, and one of the glories of this book are the objects that she conjures with such skill that you marvel at their originality and beauty.
Fairy tales have a way of touching on matters that children do not consciously understand, and as the novel probes backwards some very dark secrets come painfully into the light. But primarily the book moves forward; children grow up, lose their innocence, move into a world where fables can no longer sustain them. Many of the outcomes are happy, but with the new century the world itself is moving into a time of mourning a lost innocence that perhaps never existed. It is the age of children's stories; Kenneth Grahame ( THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS ), James Barrie ( PETER PAN ), and others were writing, perhaps in retreat from what they saw around them. Byatt handles the historical overview well, but there are places where she becomes more historian than novelist; the chapters describing the Paris Exposition of 1900 or the Munich cabaret scene of a few years later, brilliant as they are, almost lose the thread of the narrative, and perhaps there are too many famous people making convenient cameo appearances: Oscar Wilde, Auguste Rodin, Marie Stopes, and Emma Goldman, to name but a few. By the last third of the novel, the characters seem to be moved more by the tides of history than by their own volition. And the First World War is almost too easy a device for tying up the numerous narrative loose ends -- though Byatt handles the final pages with all her accustomed grace.
Behind Byatt's childlike charm there is also a smoldering anger, especially when she writes about women -- for this was also watershed era for feminism. Wealthy or poor, married or single, all her female characters seem to be looking for some truer realization of the self than society will easily allow them. One determines to become a doctor; another finds independent success as an artist. Two others go up to Newnham College, Cambridge, as Byatt herself did; there is a quality of strong personal conviction here, as a battle that needed to be fought then and must still be fought now. Indeed the whole novel, whose scope cannot be captured in a short review, seems the summation not only of Byatt's immense scholarship, but also her passion as an advocate of personal freedom. Words are her weapon, and she knows the power of story-telling to convey things that lie deeper than facts. But she also knows that some facts lie beyond the reach of stories, and that the writer may harm almost as easily as she can heal. Neither of the fictional authors portrayed in this book come over entirely as positive influences, and the latter part of the novel is almost a demonstration of the limitations of fiction. But also of its power.
More is given to the reader in this book than even usual for Byatt; I think I enjoyed this about as much as any of her novels. She employs an appropriately childlike syntactical style where she rarely varies from simple subject-predicate constructions; initially I found this a bit off-putting, but it is so appropriate to her themes (and to the enormous amount of character juggling and description in the work) that I became quickly used to it. Even more surprising might be the fact that Byatt doesn't use traditional plotting to keep her reader engaged; there's no big payoff you're waiting for other than (as with most family sagas) just the simple passing of time to see what happens to the characters. As is again fitting with her themes, Byatt allows the book to dribble off with the horrible losses incurred by the First World War, which dampers the hopes and promises of the early modern movements; perhaps there was no other way this novel could end, but it was disappointing to find the finales of some of the characters' stories left unexplained by the end. But this is a big and major novel. I think anyone interested in European fin-de-siecle or modernist culture would find much here to savor. It will be worth re-reading again in years to come.
I won't summarize plot here -- that's aptly done in the book's description. Suffice it say that by the last third, I was disappointedly counting the dwindling pages left to come. By the end, I was terrifically attached to the characters and treasured their endings. Truly a wonderful achievement, one of my Top 10 reads ever.
Top reviews from other countries
I'm glad I did, I thought this book was great. It concerns the Wellwood family, who live at a large house named Todefright in the country, and their wide network of family and friends : The London Wellwoods, The Cains, The Fludds, The Sterns and many more.
Olive Wellwood is a children's writer and mother to seven children and two others that died in infancy. Though she has many children she favours oldest son Tom and does not conceal it. As she busies herself in her work, the children are largely reared by her spinster sister Violet, who thinks of herself as their true mother.
The novel has a wide cast of both fictional and historical characters and is set initially in the Victorian era and runs all the way through to World War I. What I simply loved about this novel is the way that political and social ideas at the time, events, current affairs and philosophy are reflected through the eyes and experiences of all the characters. It is a totally remarkable production in terms of sheer research and effort, it is like a mini degree in comparative fiction. At times, particularly towards the end, it spends too much time on the history and not enough on the characters but the amount of topics it covers is astonishing :
Socialism and Marxism
The impact of being the child of a children's author
Education, particularly of women, in contrast to the importance of marriage
The Fabian Society of which many characters are members
Parenthood
Sexual abuse
The problems of being German in England in WWI
Artistry and artistic genius
Suffrage
Nature
and many more. It's fascinating. Not just the issues but the characters themselves. Dorothy and her difficult relationship with Olive, Olive's complex relationship with Tom, the psychology of Tom himself a child of nature deeply damaged by his experience at public school. The bizarre marriage of Olive and Humphrey with their ongoing trysts. The women of the Fludd family and their Havisham like existence. Elsie Warren and her brother Phillip. Herbert Methley. The characters are just great.
Towards the end their stories did begin to feel a little shoehorned - there is more to Hedda's story for example than the too short passages devoted to it, the same could be said for Robin Wellwood and Robin Oakshott. Though the book closes at 1918, some characters surviving and others not following the Great War; I really felt that if ever a book warranted a sequel it is this one and I really, really hope that Byatt writes one, so we can follow the lives our characters and their descendants through the historical events of the rest of the 20th Century.
I hugely recommend this book, my best of 2012 thus far 10/10