Eugenia, whose name connects her to the butterfly, morpho eugenia (of the novella’s title) is described like an insect in her pregnancy: “his wife slept alone in her white nest, and swelled slowly, developing large breasts and a creamy second chin. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. And I suddenly remember when she was two and condensed an entire year’s worth of the “terrible two’s” into a six-week nightmare, how I would hold her and whisper words in her ear, any words, so long as they were new, different. Hawke, Mrs Papagay thought would theorise if a huge red Cherub with a fiery sword were advancing on him to burn him to the bone; he would explain the circumstances, whilst the stars fell out of the sky into the sea like ripe figs from a shaken fig-tree.

William forms a bond with Matty, who encourages his scientific activities and displays a strong intelligence. We can feel the warmth of compassion for the ones trying to solve life’s great problems and a lively amusement in her fools and snobs.

We had no trouble selling tickets; on 14 January a full house of over 100 people attended An Evening with A S Byatt. Her novels include the Booker Prize winner Possession, The Biographer’s Tale and the quartet, The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, Babel Tower and A Whistling Woman, and her highly acclaimed collections of short stories include Sugar and Other Stories, The Matisse Stories, The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, Elementals and her most recent book Little Black Book of Stories. The plot twist featuring the brother had shock value, but was undone with the fatuous inclusion of the INSECT anagram in the following scene. For example, before we get to witness the first seance, there are what feel like chapter and chapter and chapter of background on the characters, much of which I did not retain because I had such a hard time figuring out who is who. I’ll show her how she can echo those promises someday for herself, if she chooses, at her Confirmation.

In The Conjugal Angel, curious individuals - some fictional, others drawn from history - gather to connect with the spirit world. I asked my Antonia where to begin with Byatt (thankfully, Antonia is a fan of her namesake) and she suggested I try this collection of two novellas, Angels and Insects. But my criticism actually has nothing to do with her postmodernism, and everything to do with the foundations of stories, such as they have existed for thousands of years. The Tennyson of nature being “red in tooth in claw” in “Morpho Eugenia” becomes in “The Conjugial Angel” a core presence for bravely holding to the immortal qualities of love, beauty, and the soul. an experience that is both wistful and soothing, never too dark yet not suited to being described as joyful.Her characterizations of both males and females of varied social registers are excellent, as is her ability to transmit clearly the tonal subtexts of Byatt's clause-laden, gracefully qualified sentences. I’d rather my children be who God created them to be, encompassing not only their unique gifts and talents and personhoods, but where and when they were born, and yes, who their parents are.

S. Byatt’s Booker Prize-winning novel, Possession , these two mesmerising novellas are set in the nineteenth century. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. S. Byatt's Booker Prize-winning novel, POSSESSION, they are set in the mid-nineteenth century, weaving fact and fiction, reality and romance.The Conjugial Angel”, meanwhile, is the story of a group of spiritualists at a séance and the relationship between Emily Jesse, née Tennyson, and her dead fiancé, Arthur Hallam, who was immortalised through her brother Alfred’s poem “In Memoriam”. This is also set around the time that Darwinian ideas and the debate about evolution are taking place and the tensions around these ideas also underlay the novella. Byatt’s presentation of the ferment of Victorian thinking about the world and the place of humans in it is wonderfully done. Byatt brings Arthur Hallam back as a spirit to guide the automatic writing at the séance, and I felt more than a little uncomfortable by the whole idea.