Book
Babel tower.
Record details
- ISBN: 9780679405139
- ISBN: 0679405135
-
Physical Description:
print
p. ; cm. - Publisher: New York : Random House, 1996.
Content descriptions
| Target Audience Note: | adult Follett Library Resources |
Search for related items by subject
| Subject: | TRIALS (OBSCENITY) -- ENGLAND -- FICTION FAMILY VIOLENCE -- ENGLAND -- FICTION YOUNG WOMEN -- ENGLAND -- FICTION DIVORCE -- ENGLAND -- FICTION MARRIED WOMEN -- ENGLAND -- LONDON -- FICTION |
Available copies
- 1 of 1 copy available at BC Interlibrary Connect.
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- 0 current holds with 1 total copy.
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| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Holdable? | Status | Due Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hazelton Public Library | Fic (Text) | T 0023792 | Adult Fiction - Main Floor | Volume hold | Available | - |
- Kirkus Reviews : Kirkus Reviews 1996 March
~ An ambitious, intelligent work that, while aiming to get Britain's swinging '60s down pat, unfortunately scants the usual fictional elements, putting in their place a mordant and always perceptive historical critique. This third installment in Byatt's planned quartet (after The Virgin in the Garden, 1979; Still Life, 1985) is set in that small, cozy Brit world where everyone knows everyone else because they've all been to prep school or Oxbridge together. They're insular people, smug about their politics, their unbelief, and their intellectual acumen, which, paradoxically perhaps, makes them particularly vulnerable to change. In 1964, as the story begins, Frederica, married to Nigel and the mother of four-year-old Leo, wants to put her Cambridge English degree to use. But Nigel, a quick-tempered male chauvinist, won't hear of it, of course, so after he's roughed her up a couple of times, Frederica flees with Leo to London. There, old Cambridge pals find work for her, and she begins to make a life. Revolution, however, is in the air: Students test the limits, drugs are omnipresent, grammar is under assault, the environment is polluted, nuclear war threatens, and sexual freedom is a given--all of which is crystallized in a work of fiction, Babbletower: A Tale for the Children of Our Time, that Frederica reads for a publisher and recommends. Written by Jude, a homeless vagrant with a pedigree, the novel--chapters of which are excerpted here--graphically describes a dystopia where freedom has reached its ultimate and nihilistic limits. Babbletower, and Frederica's desire to work and raise her child as a divorced woman, define the times, and the lengthy court cases in which the book is banned and Frederica granted her divorce are both fully covered. Nothing is really resolved, though the publisher of Babbletower eventually wins on appeal and Frederica gets her freedom, since what matters is the Zeitgeist, not the characters. Clever, with moments of wit and insight, but a somewhat lumbering dance to the music of time. Not Byatt's best. Copyright 1999 Kirkus Reviews - Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 1996 May
Against the heady backdrop of the swinging Sixties, Byatt's sprawling new novel contrasts the hopefulness of the era of youth, drugs, and rock'n'roll with the cynicism engendered by the Cuban Missile Crisis, early nuclear warning systems, and the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. At the dawning of the new feminist age, Frederica, a Cambridge-educated intellectual, finds herself in a stifling marriage to Nigel River, confined to his country estate and caring for her small son in the company of a severe housekeeper and hostile sisters-in-law. She finally bolts the oppressive household and her increasingly violent husband for London, where she takes refuge with understanding friends and in writing and teaching. Among her new acquaintances is Jude Mason, a troubled recluse, who is the author of "Babel Tower," the novel within this novel. Both stories portray a group of idealists intent on exploring the notion of freedom in a new world order. For Byatt's many fans who have been waiting for a follow-up novel as rich, intense, and multilayered as the prize-winning Possession (LJ 11/1/90), the wait is over. Highly recommended. Barbara Love, Kingston P.L., Ontario Copyright 1998 Library Journal Reviews - Publishers Weekly Reviews : PW Reviews 1996 March #4
One does not usually associate Byatt, who has often worked on a small-even miniature-scale, with the notion of an epic novel; but that, in terms of scope and ambition, is just what she has created here. It is an invigorating spectacle, as well as a welcome reminder of how a fine novelist can illuminate a whole era in ways not even the most skilled social historian can. Set in England in the mid-1960s, the novel focuses on Frederica, an attractive, highly intelligent and bookish young woman who cut a swath at Cambridge University, then married Nigel Reiver, a well-to-do member of the landed gentry with a country house, two doting sisters and a way of life that soon seems utterly stifling to Frederica. Her small son, Leo, passionately loved by both parents, is soon the only vital element in her existence; and when friends from her former life come calling, and are rudely rebuffed by Nigel, Frederica rebels. When Nigel, ever apologetic, but convinced it is for her own good, starts knocking her about, Frederica flees to London, with Leo clinging to her in desperation. Thereafter, the book is an account of the drawn-out custody battle over Leo, climaxing in a divorce hearing that exquisitely renders the issues of a woman's independence. More impressively, it is a riveting account of changing mores, as England begins to emerge from its ancient certainties into the shifting priorities, freedoms and follies of the "Swinging Sixties." Among the manifestations of such changes is a book written by an eccentric, Nietzschean acquaintance of Frederica's-a fantasy, with sado-erotic overtones, about the pleasures and limits of freedom. This book (a reprise of the book-within-a-book device Byatt employed in Possession) becomes the focus of another court case when its author is prosecuted for obscenity. Through the two cases (which leap from the page much more enthrallingly, convincingly and thought-provokingly than most legal thrillers) Byatt represents a whole society trying to come to terms with new values. The narrative is mesmerisingly readable, except for long excerpts from Babbletower, the prosecuted novel, and Frederica's own rather hermetic attempts at self-expression-though even these are perfectly believable in their own right. In many ways, this is a book about language, and how it is used to conceal and reveal (there is a wonderfuly satirical subplot about a commission examining English educational methods). But it also employs language, brilliantly, to create a large cast of characters whose struggles, anxieties and small triumphs are at once specific to a time and place, and universal. Simultaneous Random AudioBook; author tour. (May) Copyright 1996 Cahners Business Information. - Publishers Weekly Reviews : PW Reviews 1997 June #2
In a starred review, PW praised this "mesmerizingly readable" tale of a single mother's struggle for independence in swinging '60s London. (July) Copyright 1998 Publishers Weekly Reviews - School Library Journal Reviews : SLJ Reviews 1996 January
After collecting her Booker Award (Matisse Stories, LJ 4/1/95) and scrapping with Martin Amis, Byatt found time to write a novel set against the shifting moral, political, and musical sands of the 1960s. Copyright 1998 Library Journal Reviews
