A.S. Byatt's 1990 novel Possession was a hot, epistolary Victorian romance framed as a literary mystery, complete with epic poems, lost letters, adultery, suicide, lesbians, a bastard child, a grave robbery and hilarious send-ups of contemporary academics. No wonder it won Britain's prestigious Booker Prize and has sold hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide: it satisfies every possible literary constituency.
Byatt's latest novel, The Children's Book (Knopf; 675 pages), her ninth work of fiction since Possession , earned a spot on the Man Booker short list and has been hailed as a return to peak form....