A review by dozylocal
The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt

3.0

This book took me FOREVER to read. I have to admit that included some skim reading over the parts relevant to the social-political environment the book was written in (pre WWI) and not reading the poems at the end at all. Ignoring those bits which just don't appeal to me (but will interest other readers), I really enjoyed the various characters and what they got up to. There's no fantasy except for the fantasy of the mind of the characters and the author writes well. I do think the ending left something to be desired. I got the feeling that she wanted to give all of her characters a happy ending (which I can relate to), but that wouldn't have been realistic, so killed a lot of them off on the span of two chapters in the war instead.

My general feeling is that the author tried to do too much in one novel and probably had enough material to write three different novels (which possibly would have been better).