Product Description

Morpho Eugenia and The Conjugial Angel are two fascinating novellas and like A. S. Byatt's Booker Prize-winning novel, POSSESSION, they are set in the mid-nineteenth century, weaving fact and fiction, reality and romance.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19575 in Books
• Published on: 1993-10-21
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From the Back Cover
Morpho Eugenia and The Conjugial Angel are two fascinating novellas and like A. S. Byatt's Booker Prize-winning novel, POSSESSION, they are set in the mid-nineteenth century, weaving fact and fiction, reality and romance.
'Her plot is as compelling as that of a classical detective story, but it is the quality of the writing - its use and unity of metaphor, its sensuous language, its wit and intellectual playfulness - which renders it remarkable' Amanda Craig, Literary Review
'A. S. Byatt is one of our finest living novelists, who manages to tease and to satisfy both the intellect and the imagination ... I am already a convinced admirer of the works of A. S. Byatt. ANGELS & INSECTS should win over many more enthusiasts' Caroline Moore, Daily Telegraph
'Victorian and fun ... marvellous and maddening ... a display and a delight' Nicci Gerrard, Observer
'Her best work to date' Times Literary Supplement

About the Author
A.S. Byatt is internationally known for her novels and short stories. Her novels include Possession, 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 The Little Black Book of Stories.

Customer Reviews

Fly like an angel, sting like a bee
A.S. Byatt is best known for her lush, time-spanning historical romance "Possession." In "Angels and Insects: Two Novellas," Byatt revisits the intellectuals of the Victorian era. She dips into Victorian interests in spiritualism, insects, poetry and love -- not to mention their darker sides as well.

"Morpho Eugenia" introduces us to a young naturalist named William, who until recently had been studying insects in the Amazon. He was shipwrecked, then rescued by the wealthy Alabaster family. While continuing to study butterflies, he marries the beautiful eldest daughter Eugenia and for a time, lives the good life. The only problem is that unknown to him, Eugenia is wrapped up in a lifelong tangle of obsession and incest.

"The Conjugial Angel" introduces us to a group of mediums who gather to call up spirits. Mrs. Papagay is still in love with the dead Arturo. Emily mourns her dead lover, immortalized in her brother Alfred Tennyson's "In Memoriam" -- except she has married again. Now she struggles with her past emotions, her present doubts, and her longing to communicate with her love again.

As in her prior works, Byatt's writing is almost dizzily lush. She has a good sense of detail, describing ribbons, moths, butterfly wings, and the flames of gaslights. But pretty words are not all that Byatt has to offer -- she makes use of poetry (her own, and that of others), Darwinism and religious faith, Swedenborg, a family whose opulence covers their decay, and the nuances of love. Not to mention the dialogue: Eugenia's rambling explanation about her relationship with her brother is chilling.

Perhaps best of this collection is that Byatt has a fantastic grasp on period descriptions and dialogue -- it all sounds like a novel from the 19th centuy, with the polish of a modern book. Which is not to say that "Angels and Insects" is perfect. Byatt spends a little too much time on the moths and too little on the Alabaster family. And she's not at her best in "Conjugial Angel," which lacks the punch of the first novella. It's moving at the end, but takes awhile to get there.

Delving into such topics as survival of the fittest, poetry and love, Byatt produces a solid pair of novellas written in her usual sensuous prose. Despite some flaws that bog it down, this is a unique read.

Melancholy, languid novellas
These novellas read a bit like Virginia Woolf, as multi-layered, but earthier.

The first in this collection was wonderful. The mood is languid and slightly melancholy, the plot ambles along amidst interesting characterisations and beautiful descriptions round off the narrative, with a subtle twist at the end.

The second, while beautifully written, was a triumph of style over plot. The forbidden undercurrents somewhat redeem the novella though, and Tennyson's personal history provides some of the structure in this otherwise overly slow tale.

Watch the Old Butterflies Flutter
The first novella, Morpho Eugenia, is an account told in the fashion of a Victorian novel and is set in that time. William Anderson is a natural scientist, survivor of a shipwreck returning from his journeys of scientific exploration in the Amazons. Son of Adam of the garden of Eden living in the time where Darwinism is overcoming a long history of fervent religiosity. He is devoted above all to his study of science but finds himself at the novella's start in financial destitution, but has lucked upon the Alabasters, the father of whom is an avid collector of insects and natural life. William is more or less employed by him and inevitably falls in love with his daughter. They marry and William wishes he had found his happy ending. This is where the traditional Victorian novel would have ended it seems; though the complexity of the affair would have been drawn out further. If this had been all there was to the novel, it would have been a great disappointment by only touching upon the novella's major subjects the struggle between religion & science, class conflicts and inhibited sexuality. But instead William finds himself unsatisfied with his happy ending life and dives deeply into the local insect world of ants alongside the withdrawn and mysterious Matty Crompton. Subsequently, each of the issues is explored much more deeply and their entire world is revealed to be some sort of perverse fable with which William becomes thoroughly disgusted yet he is incapable of leaving by his own will. Only by Miss Compton's strength is he able to extricate himself from the Alabaster's swamp. This seems to be a strong comment on many Victorian novels that allowed women to transcend their fated circumstances only through the assistance of a man. This statement is made in contrast to the character of William's wife Eugenia who has been marginalized by her husband who views her only as an angel or an insect but never as a human. It seems that if he had ever recognised her as such that his happy ending would have been a sincere one. Instead, he returns to the point from which he had just returned at the start of the novella, back to the jungle of the Amazon but invested with more hope this time and the powerful human Matty beside him.

The second novella, The Conjugal Angel, seems illuminated best by Sophy Sheekhy's thought, "They strangled her, she felt sometimes, the living not the dead." The diverse lives of a cluster of spiritualists who seek to communicate with those they love. The complexity of their faith is drawn out in a series of memories and meditations focusing on the transcendental aspect of love, but also the insurmountable divide between human relations and the power of a divided spirit to ferociously tear at the living. The constant need of all those involved to reach out points to an inadequacy to communicate truthfully with the living. There is a sense that in life we are separated by these many dividing factors, but the ideal is that in death we may be joined as one. The ending which reunited Mrs. Papagay with Captain Papagay suggests a hope for the living to experience spiritual union in life that need not wait for death.

I found the first novella much more enjoyable than the second. Morpho Eugenia is able to relate a number of complex issues while being entertaining at the same time, but The Conjugal Angel is simply quite dense while portraying interesting intellectual ideas and is too literary.