The Children's Book
The Children's Book A. S. Byatt “There is a peculiar aesthetic pleasure in constructing the form of a syllabus, or a book of essays, or a course of lectures. Visions and shadows of people and ideas can be arranged and rearranged like stained-glass pieces in a window, or chessmen on a board.” The Children's Book is a mosaic picture of lives that succeeded and dreams that fell apart. You follow a complicated family history and their many friends through the turn of the century, and all the way up to WW1. In the beginning, you read a lot about the lives of the adults, but it slowly becomes more and more about the children as they grow up. The book is about going from child to adult. Finding yourself, your path in life and being yourself even if it costs you everything. During the reading, you're confronted with inevitableness of letting go, and the importance of sometimes holding on. We hardly have controll of our own lives, why should we try controlling others? “No man has a ...
