The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 17 February 1998
by A. S. Byatt
In this novel, Byatt continues her story of Frederica, a sophisticated 1960s English woman who is here on the brink of escaping a suffocating marriage. Alongside her story, we read the ornate tale of a group of refugees from post-revolutionary France as they found a new community based on total freedom. Babel Tower is an intricate interweaving of these two seemingly disparate stories; a meditation on freedom and its possibilities as well as its pitfalls. As Frederica falls into the male-dominated realm of British divorce law, the heroes of the other tale, Babbletower, become consumed with decadence and murderous depravity. Later, we learn that Babbletower is to be tried for obscenity under British law. This trial and Frederica's divorce are treated in parallel. Throughout the book, there are subtexts on language, learning, books, writing and freedom. Ambitious in its scope, this reader found the book's structure beginning to come apart as its story shifted focus from Frederica to Babbletower. It reads very much like an Iris Murdoch novel, and indeed Murdoch is invoked both in the text and the acknowledgments. Byatt's ambition spawns many characters, some of whom seem significant, but seem to vanish along the way. Subplots dissolve in a similar fashion. The writing is intricate and enjoyable, as in the Booker Prize-winning Possession. Babel Tower is beautifully woven and sometimes brilliant, yet it lacks the consistent coherence of Byatt's earlier work.
Also by Byatt: [The Matisse Stories] [A Whistling Woman]