Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction 2010.
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2009.
An engrossing family saga set in the era of the late 19th century
and up to the end of World War One. A simpler time, soon to change
politically and socially, is shown to us through three families and the
way the parents of each raise their children.
Olive Wellwood is a famous writer, interviewed with her children at her side. For each of them she writes a separate private book. In their rambling house near Romney Marsh they play in a story-book world - but their lives, those of their rich cousins and of their friends are already inscribed with mystery...
The stories within stories of these two intertwined aesthete families between 1895 and 1919 are like an Edwardian Christmas pudding, fatly stuffed with fruits and flavours. Listening is best limited to 30 minutes a day so that the period detail and the didactic setpieces may be savoured.” Observer
“...The Children's Book... reassures us there will be more worlds, more unique social juxtapositions and more potted educations from Byatt.” The Independent
“Intellectual zest keeps the book sizzling with ideas... this is the most stirring novel Byatt has written since Possession.” The Sunday Times
Author
About A.S. Byatt
A. S. Byatt is internationally acclaimed as a novelist, short
story writer and critic. Educated at York and Newnham College,
Cambridge, she taught at the Central School of Art and Design, and was
Senior lecturer in English at University College, London, before
becoming a full-time writer in 1983. She was appointed CBE in 1990 and
DBE in 1999. Her most recent novel is A Whistling Woman, the conclusion
of the famous 'Frederica' quartet.
