The Game

by A.S. Byatt

The Game is a lush and disturbing novel portraying a sibling rivalry which compels the reader to reconsider the uses and misuses of imagination. when they were little girls, Cassandra and Julia played a game in which they entered an alternate world modeled on the landscapes of Arthurian romance. Now the sisters are grown, and hostile strangers—until a figure from their past, a man they once both loved and suffered over, reenters their lives.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Novels, British Literature, Literature, Historical Fiction, Audiobook

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

A.S. Byatt (Antonia Susan Byatt) is internationally known for her novels and short stories. 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. A distinguished critic as well as a writer of fiction, A S Byatt was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999.

BYATT, Dame Antonia (Susan), (Dame Antonia Duffy), DBE 1999 (CBE 1990); FRSL 1983; Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France), 2003 , writer; born 24 Aug. 1936;

Daughter of His Honour John Frederick Drabble, QC and late Kathleen Marie Bloor

Byatt has famously been engaged in a long-running feud with her novelist sister, Margaret Drabble, over the alleged appropriation of a family tea-set in one of her novels. The pair seldom see each other and each does not read the books of the other.

Married
1st, 1959, Ian Charles Rayner Byatt (Sir I. C. R. Byatt) marriage dissolved. 1969; one daughter (one son deceased)
2nd, 1969, Peter John Duffy; two daughters.

Education
Sheffield High School; The Mount School, York; Newnham College, Cambridge (BA Hons; Hon. Fellow 1999); Bryn Mawr College, Philadelphia, USA; Somerville College, Oxford.

Academic Honours:
Hon. Fellow, London Inst., 2000; Fellow UCL, 2004
Hon. DLitt: Bradford, 1987; DUniv York, 1991; Durham, 1991; Nottingham, 1992; Liverpool, 1993; Portsmouth, 1994; London, 1995; Sheffield, 2000; Kent 2004; Hon. LittD Cambridge, 1999

Prizes
The PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Of Fiction prize, 1986 for STILL LIFE
The Booker Prize, 1990, for POSSESSION
Irish Times/Aer Lingus International Fiction Prize, 1990 for POSSESSION
The Eurasian section of Best Book in Commonwealth Prize, 1991 for POSSESSION
Premio Malaparte, Capri, 1995;
Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature, California, 1998 for THE DJINN IN THE NIGHTINGALE''S EYE
Shakespeare Prize, Toepfer Foundation, Hamburg, 2002;

Publications:
The Shadow of the Sun, 1964;
Degrees of Freedom, 1965 (reprinted as Degrees of Freedom: the early novels of Iris Murdoch, 1994);
The Game, 1967;
Wordsworth and Coleridge in their Time, 1970 (reprinted as Unruly Times: Wordsworth and Coleridge in their Time, 1989);
Iris Murdoch 1976
The Virgin in the Garden, 1978;
GEORGE ELIOT Selected Essays, Poems and Other Writings , 1979 (editor);
Still Life, 1985
Sugar and Other Stories, 1987;
George Eliot: selected essays, 1989 (editor)
Possession: a romance, 1990
Robert Browning''s Dramatic Monologues, 1990 (editor);
Passions of the Mind, (essays), 1991;
Angels and Insects (novellas),1992
The Matisse Stories (short stories),1993;
The Djinn in the Nightingale''s Eye: five fairy stories, 1994
Imagining Characters, 1995 (joint editor);
New Writing 4, 1995 (joint editor);
Babel Tower, 1996;
New Writing 6, 1997 (joint editor);
The Oxford Book of English Short Stories, 1998 (editor);
Elementals: Stories of fire and ice (short stories), 1998;
The Biographer''s Tale, 2000;
On Histories and Stories (essays), 2000;
Portraits in Fiction, 2001;
The Bird Hand Book, 2001 (Photographs by Victor Schrager Text By AS Byatt);
A Whistling Woman, 2002
Little

Reviews

[Dolors · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an unkind novel, devastating in a surreptitious, quiet, almost poisonous way.
Like Eliot’s hollow men, this story ends not with a bang, but with a whimper and leaves one a tad bit disoriented because of its seemingly gratuitous harshness.
Byatt doesn’t shy away from the miseries that befall on women with too high expectations. Nothing turns out the way the reader would like to, just like it happens every so often in life.
The story beats with the Gothic, post-Victorian narrative rhythm that I can’t resist, but it feels somehow disjointed, brimming over with potentiality not fully disclosed; preclude of masterful works like Possession and The Children's Book. Byatt’s first novella can’t but pale in comparison to the former and I am compelled to grade it on the curve.

Truth is too sharp-edged, too jagged to fit comfortably into the simplified versions of reality that we tell ourselves in order to cope with the gap between what is and what we thought our lives would be.
The two sisters in this cautionary tale learn that fact very early on in their childhood.
Cassandra trains herself to subsist in independent solitude, not wanting to depend on others’ validation. Julia looks up to her older sister reverently and seeks the invisible key that will unlock the door to her private longings.
Evoking the imaginary paracosm invented by the youthful Brontë siblings, they design a Game that consists on creating a parallel universe where they are liberated from their imposed roles, allowing their fragmentary selves to become whole.
One can’t exist without the other like to magnetic fields that repel and feed on each other at once. The tight balance is disrupted when Simon, a young naturalist with a penchant for existential quandaries, shatters the mutual vision both sisters have of the future and their place in it.
Everything changes so that it can remain essentially the same; a comfortable cocoon for two, so one of the sisters disengages from her other half and braces herself for a life of detached, isolated meditation.
Alternating the perspectives from both sisters, now adults, Cassandra a don in Oxford and Julia a successful novelist, and still estranged fifteen years after Simon disappeared abruptly from their lives, Byatt’s threads a complex web of memories that oscillate between the factual and the fictional and tantalizes the reader with his own repressed desires and disenchantments, prickling at the back of his disquieted conscience.

Like an experienced hypnotist, Byatt transfixes with a refined selection of symbols, of which the snake is the revolving center, to compose a sophisticated, if also inconclusive novel of ideas. Science and spirituality, art and nature, love and jealousy, fear and duty; the plot unfolds in apparently dichotomous couplets that engage in an erudite dance of philosophical undertone.
Should we discard the ideal of platonic love for a messy, surely-to-be flawed relationship?
Renounce to well-deserved dignity because of the incessant craving for human touch?
Give body to imagination or slither around reality like a snake changing skins and escaping confrontation with its true form?

Byatt’s two-sided characters don’t offer easy solutions to these dilemmas, but they neither judge nor moralize. Underneath the endogamic, almost suffocating closed circle of the confluent narrative voices there is a vast ocean to navigate, even at the risk of getting swallowed up in frustration and become one more casualty of its treacherous waters.

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not her best novel. Certainly not a bad novel, but compared with what she has done elsewhere, this was a bit of a disappointment.

I also had a strange reaction that the book was somehow very personal, and was sent off on a google hunt looking for gossip about her relationship with her own sister, Margaret Drabble. And, indeed, Drabble described this book as a mean little book about sibling rivalry, and not a help to their relationship. Then again, I sort of knew that they did not get along before reading this, so it may color the experience somewhat.

Finally, I felt a real sense of annoyance at some of the characters who were unable to manage their lives properly, particularly on the Julia and Thor front. Sometimes, possibly even often, this incapacity is one of the profoundly interesting things about a book, and something that you can get only from a book, as a real person doing the same things would make you absolutely crazy. But sometimes the annoyance I would have with an actual person is also my reaction to the fiction, and I'm not entirely sure what makes the difference.

I suspect that I am particularly impatient with love relationship issues -- people who insist on choosing a terrible partner, or staying with one, scenes of conjugal drama and distress, plate throwing -- which would certainly explain why Thor and Julia made me nuts. Fundamentally, I am of the Vikram Seth school of love relationships: no plate throwing.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Once you’re aware of it it’s impossible to approach this book without assuming that it’s autobiographical, at least in part. Of course there’s a smattering of autobiography in most fiction but when Byatt’s sister read the book she was less than forgiving:

She may not have known what she had done until she had written it. Writers are like that. But it’s a mean-spirited book about sibling rivalry and she sent it to me with a note signed 'With love,’ saying 'I think I owe you an apology’. – ‘Margaret Drabble: “It’s sad, but our feud is beyond repair”’, The Telegraph, 13 July 2011

Since then, the only book of Byatt’s that Drabble has apparently read has been Possession; she thinks sent her a postcard telling her it was “a wonderful book”. That would be about 1990; The Game was written in 1967.

It’s interesting that in the novel itself Byatt writes:

[Y]ou can both destroy and create reality with fiction. Fictions—fictions are lies, yes, but we don’t ever know the truth. We see the truth through the fictions—our own, other people’s…

So if we imagine that when we read The Game we’re getting at the truth behind the animosity that exists between Drabble and Byatt we’re clearly deluding ourselves. The characters have some similarities but there are enough differences too. I’m not sure that I can be as generous as Drabble when she writes that her sister “may not have known what she had done until she had written it” because central to the plot is Juliet’s writing a novel, A Sense of Glory which clearly leans heavily on her sister Cassandra as a subject. Byatt acknowledges:

I think that no one has any necessary right to publish what they know – however good it may be for them to write it. Or even if what they have written is very good. That a piece of writing is good doesn’t override other considerations – moral considerations – when it comes to damaging others. That’s an absurd overvaluation of the printed word…

That said, “a book was a book, and life was life”. The character of Emily Juliet admits in her novel is “a composite portrait, like any. And of course Cassandra and me – it’s a composite creature, in a way, a sort of binary fission” so it’s probably unwise to assume that Cassandra is Byatt and Juliet is Drabble and yet I found it hard not to.

A. S. Byatt married Ian Charles Rayner Byatt in 1959 and had a daughter, as well as a son who was killed in a car accident at the age of 11 so she has as much in common with Juliet (who’s married and has a teenage daughter) as Cassandra who’s an unmarried Oxford don and yet I couldn’t help but think of Cassandra as Byatt, perhaps unfairly since (ironically) it’s she who’s ‘attacked’ by her sister.

Hard to approach this novel without thinking about Cocteau’s Les Enfants Terribles and yet I can see anyone else making the connection:

While nursing Paul it is revealed that the siblings enjoy a relationship characterised by a psychodrama known in the book as "The Game", which can only be played in their shared bedroom, elevated by the Game-play into "The Room". The game devised by Paul and Elisabeth often involves the siblings trying to annoy or irritate each other, by histrionic behaviour on the part of Elisabeth and by a taciturn refusal to be affected by Paul, where the winner is the one that leaves the contest with the last word, a sense of superiority and ideally having caused a display of angry frustration from the other. This game continues after Paul recovers and their mother has died. – Wikipedia

The Game played by Cassandra and Juliet is not that dissimilar. Theirs is an incredibly elaborate Brontësque fantasy world they had built for themselves beginning when they were aged seven and nine, governed by complicated rules of their own making. They continued to play this until their late teens but even when we first meet them as adults, having travelled home because their father is dying, they’re still willing to sit down and play together. What becomes clear as the book progresses is that the Game has moved from the board (it’s an oilskin actually) into the real world.

Games need to be played with a purpose. There needs to be something to win. That something proves to be a man called Simon. Cassandra writes:

With J[uliet]’s television appearances I have a sense of a diminishing reflection. With his, on the other hand, I have the illusion of a world infinitely extended through dissolving glass, the Looking Glass. This must be untruth, and dangerous. Somewhere, in an unseen jungle, across an ocean and a continent, a real man, Simon, whom I love, is at this moment paddling through real water, or grubbing in real dirt, or losing real red blood from hands scraped, or cut, or sucked by flies. Here, now, I walk through unreal creepers, I study unreal dirt and water.

What I see on the screen is an image, but an image, not only of myself, but of a real man. And some of my thoughts about him are not fantasy, but knowledge. What he says, what he shows, I am occasionally, by careful attention, able to know and predict. I can accurately describe plants he must see that the screen does not show and I do not see. More than that, I know to a certain extent what he is afraid of – how well I know it I shall never tell – and what he thinks. Love is attention, though that is only a part of the truth. Between fantasy and reality are infinite degrees, and I bring myself, occasionally, to the illusion (or more) that we do share an experience or a thought. If, by denying my own solidity, I could see him as he is? Even so, the glass barrier is solid; screen, window or looking-glass. If it were not solid? No. Solidity is fact, is fact, it cannot be translated into pure threat.

All comes to a head when, after years working overseas (and having made no attempt to contact either sister), Simon returns and they end up vying (even Juliet who is nowhere near as happily married as she’d like to think she is or like others to think she is) for his attention. And they do both receive some attention from him but neither gets what they’re looking for; Simon also likes playing games.

This is a psychologically complex novel and not the easiest of reads. It consists mainly of conversations, letters and journal entries and she has a terrible habit of beginning conversations and not even letting you know who’s talking to whom for two or three pages. From the context you can usually figure it out before she confirms it but it wouldn’t have taxed her to include a couple of attributions at the start to help us on our way.

Although the sisters take centre stage Byatt also deserves credit for her minor characters: Thor (Juliet’s daughter), Simon, Deborah (Juliet’s daughter) and Ivan (Juliet’s lover) are all quite well fleshed out. Cassandra doesn’t have anyone she’s particularly close to and so her main interactions are with family and Simon.

To the book’s detriment Byatt does hog the soapbox a bit and you do wonder at times whether you’re reading a novel or an essay. Cassandra you expect to be wordy but she’s not the only one who sometimes says a bit more about a subject than, in reality, they probably would’ve known to say. There are also too many descriptions of clothes for my tastes. Can never see the point in them although to be fair even I would’ve made some effort at describing Cassandra’s dress sense (or lack of it). I see that a lot of reviewers have marked this novel down because they’ve read her later novels first—notably Possession—but fortunately I’ve only read Ragnarok: The End of the Gods and the only thing that’s significant about that book is the Byatt omits her sister from the narrative completely.

The ending surprised me. Others have complained about it. It made me reassess the rest of the book. That none of the characters is particularly likeable didn’t bother me though. Likeable people although nice to be married to don’t often make the best subject matter. So my wife’s safe there. I won’t be writing any novels about her in the foreseeable future.

[Nikki · Rating 1 out of 5]

I now know why this was one of the few books available on my library's list of downloadable audiobooks.(They work like real books in the library, so you can't check one out that someone else already has.) The synopsis was rather misleading (I thought there would be some fantasy involved, but I never got that far). The characters were disagreeable, and seemed to talk to themselves (in interior dialogue) far more than to each other. I made it through about three chapters before falling asleep. I now see why I could never get very far into Possession either. My remaining years of reading and listening are too short to continue with this one.

[Mariam Odent · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was listening to BBC's Open Book podcast on 20th century women's writing and A.S. Byatt's name came up a lot. So I decided to give her a try. As shallow as it sounds, the book cover for this novel was ugly and it screamed "BORING BOOKS YOU READ IN SCHOOL BUT WOULDN'T TOUCH ON YOUR OWN." And I was right. It emcompasses everything I dread about highly regarded writers in its dry metaphors and self-absorbed characters. It was written in the sixties where I guess it was kind of trendy to write about unhappy housewives in the name of being progessive. But really? This book is about unhappy privileged people who are entitled as hell. And the ending was anti-climatic and really, I didn't care for it.



What this book got right was the passive aggressive nature of women and with so little words, they can ruin each other. Even more so if they're siblings. Or the ways in which marriages die and disintegrate when simmering anger and unspoken resentment slowly and quietly erode relationships. It's a bitter book and I sense there's a bit of autobiography in the A.S. Byatt's contentious relationship with her sister, Margaret Drabble (the two refuse to speak to each other and pretty much hate each other's guts) and if my sister wrote a book like this about me, I wouldn't speak to her either. This book just...ugh. It left a bad taste in my mouth in its truthful bitterness and its pretentious academic wankery.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a strange and gorgeous book. I love Byatt's writing. I wanted to strangle several of the characters, though. One line in "The Game" became my meditation for the results of the 2010 election: "It is always foolish to care about what one can't help. But unfortunately we never know with any certainty what we can't help. And we are not usually capable of not caring."

[Tricia · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book wasn't really for me. I think it was more complicated than it needed to be.

Basically it is about the relationship that two sisters have with the same man (a herpetologist) and the complications this brings in their relationships.

[Larry · Rating 1 out of 5]

As a Byatt enthusiast how can I say this without sounding petulant....this book is a mess. Having read and thoroughly enjoyed most of her work this was a shock. The story telling is bizarre with characters that in spite of suggestion and page after page of description are never defined. If her point was the suggestion and its there from page one - Simon and the two sisters have some dark secret- that is never clearly or effectively enunciated. The description of the family home and events at the death of the sisters' father is well done and it was there that I anticipated a favourable turn in the narrative - alas it reverted again to the circular rotation of aimless meanderings.
Cassandra the tragic and interesting sister is never quite given the stage she deserves instead we get page after page of sister Julia who is a complete numptie- I can NEVER believe that she could write a postie-note never mind a novel! She is a uncaring mess who is suddenly surprised she has written a novel that ridicules her sister only when she gets the book form the printer???? She was told by the priest of the dangerous mental condition of her sister but no she marches on regardless...wow!! This is truly a mess if anyone should read this review please don't waste your time - just skip this in your reading of Ms Byatt's ovre!!

[Cameron · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is probably the worst book I've ever read, especially disappointing because I heard so much about Possession, highly praised by my friends (although pretty much everyone told me, "I skipped all the poetry."). This badly crafted tale of two sisters' rivalry for the attentions of an arrogant TV star is both irritating and dull, full of overwrought descriptive passages and clumsy attempts to "get into the mind" of the main characters. The plot eventually gets lost in all of the pseudopsychological meanderings, but in the end no one is really happy (is that a spoiler?). Byatt opens every scene by telling us what people are wearing, for no discernible reason, and much time is spent describing Quaker meetings, which are in some way supposed to be fascinating but I found pointlessly dull. I only finished the book because I was at a remote outpost in the Brazilian rainforest and had nothing else to read. I suppose I should read Possession, but I guess I'll wait till I'm back in the rainforest.

[David]

I've seen it described as somewhat melodramatic. a little too obsessed with its own weirdnesses, and perhaps a touch Bronte-esque. Sounds about right. It is a very intellectual novel, but as much as it is rooted in Oxford, it is also rooted in TV; as articulate and elegant as it is, it is also tabloid. In short, an interesting mixture of unusual characters but also a bit difficult to really "like."

[Lise Petrauskas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hm. I was hopeful about this book, but ultimately it felt muddled. Not as clear and confidently executed as Possession (the only other book of hers I’ve read). The amount of effort put into The existing characterization was disproportionate to the actual events and excitement of the plot. I was expecting the dark heart of the book, seemingly something to do with The Game of the title, to have a bigger role. It’s almost as if Byatt never fully allowed herself to “go there” because I fully believed that these sisters had the issues they had but there was ultimately no dramatic sense of why we were hearing about it. If taken less diffusely it could have been a tragedy or, handled in a more Murdochian way, a tragicomedy. I see that this was published in 1967 and is her second published work. For some reason, I hadn’t thought of Byatt as writing contemporaneously with Murdoch. Murdoch published her first novel in 1954. They both have similar material, culturally and philosophically, but Byatt is much more heavy handed. Still, an interesting early effort. Byatt writes about relationships, art, and ideas that pique my interest, so I’ll probably keep going.

Authors who seem to me to be in this cohort...
Edith Wharton
Henry James
E.M Forster
Virgina Woolf
Iris Murdoch
Margaret Drabble (first novel 1963)
Ian McEwan (first novel published 1978)
Michael Cunningham
Zadie Smith

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first book I've read by A.S. Byatt, and I can't wait to read more. I love her inter-textuality and the magical way she combines metaphors and associations to convey her characters' experiences of the world. I found a lot of 'truthful dialogue' in this book; words that really struck at me. Her characters in this book are entangled in the over-reflexive worlds of literature academia, metaphor and writing, where they are being tugged between significance and insignificance.

My favourite aspect of the book was how the sisters reflected two sides of the same 'existential problem', and I liked how it reminded me of Sartre. One was lost in the paralysis of possibilities; the other was trapped in the constraints of the certain.

The writing was at times very dense, and I'm sure I didn't get all of the intertextuality, but I really appreciated how this novel takes the reader into the heads of the characters; associations and all.

[Rebecca · Rating 1 out of 5]

I almost didn't finish this book, and it took me two weeks to get through it, which is kind of unheard of in my reading history. I always finish a book, even if I hate it, and usually in less than three days for fiction. I didn't hate this book, but I had a really hard time losing myself in it... and that's why I read in the first place, immersion into another world, another person. I'm not sure whether the fault is with me or the book. I really enjoyed a couple of Byatt's other books, which is why I got this one from the library in the first place.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, but meh. Byatt's characters routinely quoting Coleridge and falling passionately over abstract thought made more sense when it was delivered by literary scholars in Possession. True, this book focuses on a medieval scholar and a contemporary author, but it's still far-fetched and was hard to follow sometimes. Some things were inexplicable, like Cassandra's immense fear. Did I skip a page? I'm not giving this a lower rating because it was still a compelling read, especially when the messy humanity was allowed to show through.

[Rahul Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is Byatt's early work. Her second novel, if I'm not wrong, published in 1967. She was 30, or 31 then. Very easily, one who knows of Byatt's strained relationship with her sister, Margaret Drabble can qualify this novel as a rendition of that relationship. Maybe it was but I tried not to pay attention to it as I enjoyed this beautiful book. We follow two sisters; Cassandra and Julia. Cassandra is 38, an Oxford don, who wears too many jewelleries and mismatched clothes. Julia is younger, in her early 30s, a novelist of woman's life and circumstances. Julia is married to a rather settled man and has a teenage daughter already whereas Cassandra keeps to herself. Both the sisters have not met in years but recent death in family brings the sisters together in their childhood home in the north of England. With that comes in Simon, a man they had both once loved and over whom the sisters had fought and never reconciled. I must admit that Cassandra did not seem like she was 38. She seemed to be much older and maybe Byatt did a little disservice to that bit by seeing her as 38. But that aside, this novel of science, bitter sibling relation, novels, media and campus drama was a delight to read. Although the page count may be only 240 (rare for a Byatt novel), the font was tiny and I am sure on a regular format, the book would be well beyond 400 pages. The book was tender in many places. I lived for those moments of tenderness. And you begin to realise it was less about the sisters and more about the two parts of Byatt's identity that was at loggerheads in this novel: the novelist vs the academic. I found the details in this of the two sides quite telling and I could hear the thirty-something Byatt groan at the two facets as she had to make a choice to either write for a living or teach. To me, the vulnerabilities of both the sides came out brilliantly. Simon's character was a splendid addition, although he was kept in this blurry zone, he didn't seem to cause trouble. There is one section that is simply terrible where she describes black people in Julia's house. I do not think Byatt wrote like that about Blacks again because it was deeply injurious. Regardless, I am content to end September with this book. It was nice to return to Byatt through this book in 2025. Next year, her debut, for sure.

[Sara Ennis · Rating 5 out of 5]

the girls who get it get it pienso

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one’s only for the real Byatt-heads. Still very interesting to speculate about why this book offended her sister so badly!

[Jeanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

A very frustrating novel to read because I could see what Byatt wanted it to be but to me it was a failure. I think she was inspired by the Bronte's game as children creating an imaginary kingdom and writing stories about it. The two sisters in this story, Cassandra and Julia, did just that with maps and handmade characters, but the game is not described or elaborated on just hinted at. You know that Cassandra was cruel and had a streak of madness, but how this played out when they were children is unclear. You know that Julia was rebellious against Cassandra's many rules and attempts to shut Julia out, and as a consequence Julia internalized a generalized feeling of guilt that attached freely to everything she did and that the sisters were not close.

All of those elements could have made a really interesting story if they had been fleshed out. But then a whole lot of other more or less insane characters were added to the story in unhelpful ways. The parents were Quakers and talked in ye olde timey Quaker speech which really didn't mesh well with Cassandra's obsession with medievalism. It created a lot of time and cultural differences to juggle. Julia's insane husband Thor was also a Quaker balancing a need to completely martyr himself to helping others, to the point of moving messy entitled homeless people into his own small house, with a desire to violently kill all of these people who were asking too much of him, including his own wife who he was in an ill defined way sexually incompatible with (?).And then there was the insane daughter who took after the insane sister Cassandra. Plus the messy homeless people. That's a lot of plot that just felt jammed in there for no reason. And then everyone is blaming Julia somehow for the actions of the insane husband, the insane daughter, and the entitled homeless people. It was too much.

The novel might have been able to make something out of the bizarre romantic competition between the two sisters over Simon the bizarre neighbor with an unexplained horrific backstory and an obsession with snakes. Both sisters have an overintellectualized love interest in the overintellectualized Simon that is impossible to understand since he is described so meticulously as physically repulsive and completely unable to connect with fellow human beings.

Did I like anything about the novel? I like the extended discussions of snakes and all the snake metaphors. I did like the mad sister although I think she her madness in childhood wasn't sufficiently explored. I liked the use of extreme reactions to the difficulties of making sense of life -- that Simon had to flee civilization in order to annihilate himself in uncaring nature because of his inability to relate to other people and Thor had to combat his desire to choke the life out of really annoying people by constantly do everything in his power to help the world knowing that he can never do enough to make a real difference. I also liked the idea that novelists have to create stories partly out of family members and friends and that by doing so they can ruin their lives, that everything a novelist writes is stolen.

It almost felt like she had an idea but it petered out so she kept adding extraneous elements until she reached her page count. Which is too bad.

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a novel where almost nothing happens, I was completely hooked. There are several things in life I just plain adore: slow burn novels that are about nothing at all and subtlety (also, though not related to this novel: abandoned condemned houses, rain on the beach, November weather, gloves). The plot of this novel is not complex and can probably be described in one or two sentences. But it isn't about the plot and it's barely about the characters. It's about the writing itself and an attempt to depict life as realistically as possible. Byatt has this way of making even a really boring novel like this one absolutely fascinating due to her metaphors, lovely prose, and symbolism. This novel is about so much more than just two weirdo sisters who both need to get a freakin grip on their lives. You can't go into this novel expecting to want to invite any of these characters to a party or anything, in fact, the only remotely likable character is Deborah, and she is barely in it, but, at least for me, this novel was wholly interesting.

Yet, speaking of the characters, I can sympathize more with Cassandra than Julia, because as someone who is heavily involved in her own fantasy life, I can understand how sometimes dreaming of what could be is often more compelling than living real life. But where I dally in my daydreams (like most people), Cassandra used them to hide from life and she had some kind of mental problem divorcing reality from fantasy. If Cassandra were around today, she would likely be holed up in her room writing fan fiction erotica instead of religious treatises, but with the same inability to cope with real life scenarios. Which is what I find fascinating with this novel - despite the almost 50 year difference in the setting, the issues are the same. Today, we have names for what Cassandra has/is - "schizotypal personality disorder" perhaps, "hoarder" definitely. And Julia, she's just a spoiled brat with a ridiculous husband. And Simon... basically everyone in this novel needed therapy of some kind, but then again, maybe that's why they seemed so realistic, because they were so flawed. A bit hyperbolic, true, but they make mistakes and don't say the things they mean and act selfishly (just like normal people).

This novel was like peering into someone's window while driving by at night - somewhat voyeuristic but more so just to assuage curiosity - what are they doing in there? - and then realizing that all they are doing is watching TV. Boring, but, for some reason, absorbing.

[Emmett · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strange novel that encircles and returns again and again to its themes before closing in slowly on an unexpected conclusion. Repeated obsession, derangement, estrangement, the separation of bodies from other earthly attachments run through the minds of characters which may seem different at first glance but who are ultimately concerned with how they (and in abstraction, people) connect with and relate to each other, and who and what they are attached to. Proximity proves the capacity for both intimacy and harm. This double-edged promise-threat is intermittently expressed, withheld, embraced, recoiled from but it never loses its fatal attraction. (This may seem like a striking observation at first, but then one becomes reminded that life experience itself is sufficient for us to know that.) I think it is that very thing which drives the characters finally to their own endings.

While the tone of the story and its characters didn't interest me as much as I had liked to be interested in them, one feels obligated to credit and admire Byatt's psychological acumen as she exhibits and explores them in their tortured complexity. She differentiates and pins down their yearnings, doubts, fears and shortcomings in the manner of a vivisectionist. The effect - sympathetic yet merciless - is reminiscent of Iris Murdoch's examination of her characters' morality, actions and culpability in her own novels.

Her capacity for psychological intensity is wonderfully matched with her intelligence. As in many of her novels, a certain subject/topic is evoked (medieval literature and iconography is this one's), which is then explored in considerable depth, and slowly expanded in ripples until the whole novel feels like a web of ideas, each point delicately and discernibly linked to another, trembling in their resonance. One anticipates to be educated by her works, and I have yet to be disappointed. The only dissatisfaction I felt was that, as reader, I was unable to meet the story at the level it deserved, since many of its references went over my head. That lack, however, always seems to be a promise rather than a reprimand, an olive branch held there for the reader willing to do what it takes to grasp it, the proffering of a reward yet to be attained, something there waiting to be known.

[Ophelia Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

Admittedly, I feel I am probably below the knowledge level required to understand all the themes here, namely: sin, salvation, human connection… etc. Cassandra’s chapters ( as she declines into hallucinatory psychosis) were wordy and conceptual beyond my ability. So, I enjoyed Julia’s story more so, also because her life was more dynamic and engaged (Cassandra is a reclusive Oxford don). Julia has affairs, a child, a husband, making her life more, well, interesting. I also felt more for Julia, who amidst all of Cassandra’s accusations, repeatedly tried to resolve whatever strange conflicts the two had. I wonder as well if the transcending-life nature of their relationship was too difficult to understand, and means that lots of the book’s material was waded through blindly (by me anyway).
‘The Game’ as an actual thing turned out to be negligible. I would have liked more grounding of it, or a demonstration of its relevance. There were a few references to the board game and how it tied the sisters on some supernatural level, but there was no evidence to suggest that it should be a term projected to reflect the book’s whole landscape. As usual though, I liked the sister’s rural, quiet, solitary childhood, maybe this is what I want too. Maybe.
I can tell that the book, its title and its enduring symbol of a snake (?) probably allude to Genesis’ Fall and inherent sin. But apart from this, the snake motif was lost on me, as was Cassandra’s incessant theories of light and barriers. I’m sure it’s all biblical, but I don’t see an easy interpretation.
As a side note, I find A.S.Byatt and Iris Murdoch’s writing similar in style, although what Byatt lacks in Murdoch’s balanced humour is made up for in a sort of twisted prophesying style. I wonder if this is due to both being slightly aged women who write with a certain cynicism with respect to sex and its implications. Much respect to them, it’s the kind of writing I would want to produce, but probably cold never.

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

CW: animal death, suicide, child abuse
Actual rating: 3.5 stars... I think??

I was not aware of the feud between Byatt and her sister, Margaret Drabble, before I began reading this book, but I can certainly see why this may have exacerbated an already strained relationship - it is both the injury and the apology at once.
Byatt is clearly visible in traits of both Julia and Cassandra, the two sisters of the novel, though I would venture to say she is perhaps a little more Cassandra. Especially since, at least personally, I found Julia to be by far the less-likable of the pair. But I suppose even in unflattering literary fiction one cannot be too cruel to oneself.

This book is, honestly, quite impossible for me to rate. (Well, not entirely possible, but I'm not even sold on the rating I've already given it.) It's extremely far outside of my normal reading genre; very much domestic and literary fiction, featuring the hallmark unlikable characters and very little motivation behind the plot.
I did enjoy it in the end. To be fair - we have already established how much I enjoy Byatt's writing, but this is a very different beast to Possession. Written much earlier, it features several outdated moments racial commentary that I am inclined to forgive, just given the time period. Something to keep in mind, however.

[Isabelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

The subject of this novel is not original: stories of devastating sibling rivalries, principally between sisters, abound in fiction but also in real life. I am myself part of such a story and have been since I was born, it seems. And so is A S Byatt actually!
Regardless, it is not surprising that novelists should be drawn to those complex relationships between girls and eventually women, who are intensely codependent and whose tormented, albeit real, love for each other is not a choice but a genetic mandate, a mandate that can so easily transmute into moments of sheer hatred and destruction.
The good news is that A S Byatt adds so much to the story: a long parallel discourse on faith, an exploration of the creative process in art, a fierce satire of mass media, and last but not least the haunting presence of Medieval and Chivalric literature. And the novel becomes a treat!

Of course, this is an early novel, and the excesses that give Byatt her fiery brilliance, do sometimes run away from her! I did not mind all that much...

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a difficult book for me to rate by way of stars.

I would give it 4-ish stars for the story itself -- well-written and well-crafted.

There were quite a few sections, however, where the characters had long discussions about philosophical/religious/existential topics, reminding me of a Russian novel in tone and content, if not in scope. This is what dropped it star-wise for me. These were interesting tangents, and they did go some way toward explaining character motivation, but they didn't exactly move the plot along. I listened to The Game via Overdrive (sped up quite a bit), otherwise I'm sure these parts would have dragged.

Looking at this novel from a purely literary point of view, it should probably get 4-5 stars, but for readability, I have to drop it down a bit.

[Kathleen Hulser · Rating 3 out of 5]

Deep and delicate, this exploration of sister love and rivalry offers nuanced insight into the dynamics of closeness and conflict. Byatt skillfully details how each sister is defined by the other, and grasps her own identity through the flickering imagery of this mirroring. Whether or not Julia, the lively, gregarious writer or Cassandra, the tortured and withdrawn academic accept what they see is always changing. The very nature of their dialogue, laid out in their elaborate childhood games of Arthurian romance, pits them against one another, and yet they are only fully themselves when engaged in rejecting the other sibling who defines their limits and their dreams. The novel embraces psychology as a method, not so much illuminating as puzzling. These mental mysteries and contradictions animate the tale which rarely turns to incident to propel the narrative.

[Chanterelle · Rating 1 out of 5]

Suppose you set out to write a novel about two sisters who used to play a fiercely imaginative game as kids, just like the Brontës, a game that took up most of their daily and emotional lives. Suppose you name this novel "The Game". Suppose you then never disclose the contents of the game, only ever reference them vaguely and obliquely, and almost all of the sisters' interactions and dialogue (and private thoughts) revolve around their past affections for some man, who is probably gay? And somehow imagination is to blame for all the mess.
Not what I'd bargained for.
Also, the characters are thoroughly unlikable, and it seems like the author is disgusted by them, too.

[K. Fox (Cahill)]

I get the impression that this authoress hates womenkind.

I see a pattern of her FMCS being written as having irritating personalities, or have some kind of ugliness or fashion faux-pas consistency to them….are self-loathing, loathe others, and/or are oppressive.
Her men, on the other hand, are handsome, controlled, controlling, handsome again (she just keeps hammering that in), far more mature and self-possessing then their emotional ugly wives, and it just gets old so fast. It worked in the other novel I read by her (Babel) but seeing the same formula repeated again is kind of caustic.
Beautiful descriptions and vivid imagery as always. But this one wasn’t for me, DNF halfway through.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

A story of a very fraught relationship between two sisters, one an Oxford scholar of a monastic disposition, the other a popular novelist. One imagines Byatt's somewhat famously uncordial relationship with her sister Margaret Drabble is a source for the story, though one hopes it not quite so bad as this makes out. The scholarly sister is named Cassandra - I thought I was being rather clever in connecting this choice with Jane Austen's sister, but the character herself muses upon the parallel about 3/4s of the way through.

[Rhonda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did listen to the whole book. I have to say at no time did I feel like I understood what was going on. A banter back and forth of two women that simply were not understandable or normal. At some point I started thinking that they were split personality and they were each trying to do away with the other. I guess in a way one did.

Since I listened to this book I will say the voice of the characters seemed some how not right for the part. Harsh in a way that made you defensive while listening. It also made it difficult to relax and get into.

[Fatima Siddique · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had a really hard time finishing this book. The main characters are unlikeable, pretentious oddballs. Their conversations were always very grave and not quite believable. Nobody includes that many references to the Bible, Mallory, or Darwin in their chats with long lost childhood friends. There was not enough in the narrative about their childhoods to make the shifts in their character sympathetic or compelling. Not to mention the shifts were incredibly sudden. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone.