A Whistling Woman

The Frederica Quartet #4

by A.S. Byatt

The Booker Prize-winning author of Possession delivers a brilliant and thought-provoking novel about the 1960s and how the psychology, science, religion, ethics, and radicalism of the times affected ordinary lives. 

“Rich, acerbic, wise.... [Byatt] tackles nothing less than what it means to be human.” — Vogue

Frederica Potter, a smart, spirited 33-year-old single mother, lucks into a job hosting a groundbreaking television talk show based in London. Meanwhile, in her native Yorkshire where her lover is involved in academic research, the university is planning a prestigious conference on body and mind, and a group of students and agitators is establishing an “anti-university.” And nearby a therapeutic community is beginning to take the shape of a religious cult under the influence of its charismatic religious leader.

A Whistling Woman portrays the antic, thrilling, and dangerous period of the late ‘60s as seen through the eyes of a woman whose life is forever changed by her times.

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

447 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

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

[Lorna · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Whistling Woman was the final book of The Frederica Quartet preceded by The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, and Babel Tower. This was the story of the Potter family, specifically Frederica Potter as seen through some volatile periods in history in the changing social and political landscape of England between 1953 and 1970. I am feeling a little lost now that I have turned the last page of this magnificent quartet.

A Whistling Woman and a Crowing Hen
is neither good for God nor men.

---- A frequent saying of my maternal grandmother

At the heart of this book was a fictional fairy tale written by Agatha. It was the summer of 1968 and the telling of the story had begun two years ago, almost every Sunday. The first listeners had been Saskia, Agatha's daughter, now eight, and Leo, the son of Fredericka, who shared Agatha's house in Hamelin Square, in Kensington. One Christmas morning the two children were deep in wrapping paper when Saskia was the first to discover the story they had heard for a few years was now a published book and she and Leo had received their own signed copy with the book's dedication, For Saskia and Leo, who listened to this story, With love.

It is in A Whistling Woman, that we see the dangerous late 1960s through the eyes of fiery Frederica Potter who becomes forever changed because of the turbulent times. Now, divorced and raising her son Leo, 33 year-old Frederica Potter becomes host of a groundbreaking BBC talk show produced by her former University mentor, gradually drawing her back into that world. The setting for the television show in London is very avant-garde with mirrors and glass in odd shapes setting the stage for her literary and artistic guests in the often Alice in Wonderland kind of fantasy world depicted by the staging. This book hosts an array of characters, some rational and others quite mad, set in the world of academia sometimes pitting all of the sciences including psychiatry and biology in very unusual, sometimes dangerous circumstances. In some ways, the books come full circle culminating in the staging of A Winter's Tale with Mary Orton, the young daughter of Stephanie and Daniel Orton playing the role of Perdita, bringing all of the Potter family to the first row to watch the play on opening night. This was a beautiful book brimming with ideas and much debate and social commentary. But throughout the book, Frederica gracefully carries on in her personal and professional life to pursue intellectual and emotional fulfillment amid the upheaval in society. The Frederica Quartet was a true tour de force by A.S. Byatt, well done.

"An audience is one, and many, it is moved separately and together."

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh AS Byatt, I love ye! Once again another engaging and engrossing book by Ms. Byatt. Sometimes I wonder if other people have realize that Byatt may be one of the smartest authors alive? But her story weaves together Univeristy life, cults, the study of snails, mythology, sexuality, dissertations, children's stories, the emerging influence of television, feminism and early 1970s rebellion in England. And she nails it all. This book is fascinating not only because she offers a buffet of ideas and subjects but also an ever-changing narration of characters. Be sure to clear your schedule because you'll want to spend all your day reading it.

[Bettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007jsrf

Description: Frederica Potter, a smart, spirited 33-year-old single mother, lucks into a job hosting a groundbreaking television talk show based in London. Meanwhile, in her native Yorkshire where her lover is involved in academic research, the university is planning a prestigious conference on body and mind, and a group of students and agitators is establishing an “anti-university.” And nearby a therapeutic community is beginning to take the shape of a religious cult under the influence of its charismatic religious leader.

Frederica resigns but makes a living by reviewing. Edmund has an idea for a heavier television programme. Stars James Callis.

Frederica has doubts about her television career and her brother, Marcus, makes a shocking discovery. Stars Karl Prekopp.

Frederica reignites an old flame, John, and her new TV series starts. Marcus finds a damsel in distress. Stars Richard Coyle.

Daniel has difficulty communicating with Will, and Lucy joins a disreputable religious commune. Stars Shaun Dooley.

The religious community in Yorkshire becomes cult-like under the influence of its charismatic leader. Stars Ben Thomas.

Protesters disrupt the prestigious conference at the Yorkshire university where Luke is speaking. Stars Peter Marinker.

Alexander hosts a play to raise cash for repairs and a fire at the farm has dire consequences. Stars Indira Varma.

[Aleksandra Bekreneva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Нелепая [местами] прекрасная жизнь и нелепая смерть

В финальной части «Квартета Фредерики», «A Whistling Woman», Антония Байетт не подводит никакой черты, не делает окончательных выводов, она скорее бросает читателя в открытый океан — а там уж плыви к берегу и барахтайся, как хочешь.

Главные выжившие герои в конце и те смеются и сами не знают, что делать. И тут, теоретически, могла бы быть и пятая, и шестая книги, история остаётся живой и неоконченной.

Четвёртая часть по уровню мрачности, жести и нелепости смертей превзошла жуткую вторую. Здесь Байетт немного отошла от главного фокуса на Фредерике Поттер, её семье и друзьях, хотя в книге это всё тоже есть, и больше сфокусировалась на абсолютно последовательном, логичном и детальном описании того, как, казалось бы, на ровном месте — некой терапевтической группы, растёт странный, деструктивный культ.

Наверное, больше всего и леденяще всего меня впечатлило детальное описание истории и личности лидера культа, Джошуа Рамсдена / Лэмба, сына убийцы, который остался в живых по странной случайности и всю жизнь пытался придать этой случайности некий высокий смысл избранности. Байетт показывает неизбежность его пути, почти полную его предопределённость.

Жутко показан и рост самого культа, а на дворе — конец 60-х, когда из чего-то почти по-детски наивного вырастает нечто опасное.

Другие главные герои книги здесь только зарождающееся телевидение, на котором теперь успешно работает Фредерика (представляя собой нечто вроде наших сегодняшних блогеров — увлекательно, но несколько поверхностно) и наука, в которой трудятся учёные Люк и Жаклин, а также брат Фредерики Маркус, претендующая на глубину и серьёзность. Идёт полным ходом столкновение и взаимопроникновение этих двух миров. Они переходят от отрицания и насмешек друг над другом к пониманию того, что одно без другого невозможно. Умная статья лучше всего тогда, когда о ней говорят, когда её широко обсуждают. Пусть даже это делают люди, которые не до конца понимают эту самую статью. А поверхностное телевизионное шоу лучше всего тогда, когда из него ты всё же помимо только развлечения черпаешь важную для себя информацию.

Я бы сказала, что Байетт удалось создать грандиозный и увлекательный мир, масштабный, на четыре книги, который совершенно не хотелось покидать. И, будь у этой истории продолжение, я бы сейчас читала его, а я ведь не большая любительница серий. Четыре огромные книги были прочитаны мной за несколько недель — настолько история не отпускает!

Интеллектуальной жизни и поискам смысла в заключительной части «Квартета...» Байетт уделяет гораздо больше внимания, чем перипетиям личной и интимной жизни героев (мне в личку даже присылали жалобы некоторых читателей на дикое количество секса в первых трёх книгах). Хотя, сюрприз, именно в заключительной книге Фредерика наконец-то найдёт любовь, совсем не там, где ожидала.

Читать? Однозначно!

[Ron Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fans of A.S. Byatt's fiction can be divided into two groups: Those who cannot understand her novels and those who lie. Even her most popular work, the Booker Prize-winning "Possession," was demanding, and her previous novel, "The Biographer's Tale," was downright baffling.

Her latest, "A Whistling Woman," completes a tetralogy, meaning a fair number of us already feel intimidated. The series began 25 years ago with "The Virgin in the Garden," which introduced Frederica Potter, then a precocious teenager. Now, three novels later, Frederica has abandoned her university post - driven away by self-righteous and dimwitted undergraduates, no doubt the kind of lazy readers who would find A.S. Byatt's novels too arduous.

The British publisher claims that "A Whistling Woman" stands on its own, but I just wished it would stand still. This peripatetic story about the late 1960s is as fascinating, eclectic, and confusing as that psychedelic era.

The various strands of the plot wind around a body-mind conference being planned at a new university in Yorkshire. An infinitely patient vice chancellor hopes to inspire "a biological-cognitive Theory of Everything," while his vindictive New Age wife traipses around campus reading hippies' horoscopes. To ensure maximum academic and media attention, he's invited speakers from every possible discipline - even, against his better judgment, religion.

Meanwhile, back in London, Frederica has reluctantly accepted a job as the host of a new television talk show called "Through the Looking Glass," a wacky and cerebral kaffeeklatsch about the way "television is going to change everyone's consciousness." The first step in her preparation for the job is to buy a television and watch some of it. She's not impressed, but something intrigues her about the possibilities of this new medium. Soon she's appearing on the screen as "the Witch in the sugar cottage" talking about "Doris Lessing's idea of Free Women, George Eliot, and a Tupperware bowl." (Check your local listings.)

Unfortunately, just as she begins to find success and a bit of fame, her boyfriend moves back to Yorkshire to continue his work in advanced mathematics at the university. He's working with researchers who are studying the physiology of memory by observing snails. But he's also drawn inexorably to his mentally ill twin brother, who's a member of a therapy group that's metamorphosing into a religious cult.

Everyone's looking forward to the body-mind conference, including a group of radical students who have founded an antiuniversity outside the grounds of the old-style university on land owned by the religious cult where the biologists' well-observed snails live.

If you're still with me, you're probably thinking this is a pretty poor inventory of the story, but actually, it's something of a miracle that I could corral "A Whistling Woman" even into this unruly summary. The plot is so fragile that it breaks into tangents at the slightest touch of coherence.

And yet it's all strangely engaging, partly because Byatt constantly tempts us to pursue connections between these disparate elements, but also because she's embedded the cosmic ideas of this ultimate novel of ideas in the lives of such interesting characters.

One of the most gripping and disturbing is a psychiatric patient known sometimes as John Lamb. He gradually emerges as the charismatic leader of the Spirit's Tigers, an apocalyptic cult near the university. Byatt moves back to his childhood and the ghastly murders that derailed his life, sending him into the fiery tropes of the Bible for guidance.

Other narrators watch Lamb too, responding in various ways to his seductive theology. Letters from his Jungian analyst, for instance, to a colleague show the slow corrosion of the doctor-patient relationship. And a sociologist secretly studying the cult provides increasingly terrifying reports about its madness.

In the best tradition of chaos theory, everything in this story refolds to greater complexity. That can be maddening, but it's also fascinating. Where else can a religious maniac explain Kierkegaard's analysis of Abraham's faith, and keep you on the edge of your chair?

The most unnerving implications surround issues of faith in a world rapidly becoming convinced that all thought can be reduced to matter. Trapped in recurring hallucinations of blood, poor Lamb is lost in a thicket of theological symbolism that forces us to confront a blurry line between the mentally ill and the spiritually minded. The psychiatrists studying Lamb ask themselves how science will ever distinguish between a dangerous fanatic and a religious visionary.

On the university campus, even the scientists most devoted to snail and memory research sense something inadequate about their attempts to reduce all cognition to the activity of electricity in gray matter.

Jacqueline, a brilliant young student toiling in the sexist shadow of her adviser, cries out: "I don't know how I got myself so cocooned in my self. I want to be able to do the things people do - I want to live, not just to think." Ultimately, she needn't worry: There are forces within these characters - noble and shameless - that defy their rationality, that thwart their perfectly logical, Darwinian explanations and throw them into life with a vengeance.

Clearly, this is serious play for a writer who can make words do magic, and she's never been more intellectually lush than here. One senses in Byatt's witty satire of the antiuniversity a venting of authorial rage against lazy minds that fail to appreciate the accumulation of wisdom. And yet, the conflagration that ends the vice chancellor's quest for a Theory of Everything casts a humble light on the all-inclusive ambition of this remarkable quartet of novels.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1219/p1...

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having just re-read all of A.S. Byatt's Frederica Potter books, I can say that this ending volume isn't all that satisfying. In this book, it's now the late 1960s, and Frederica and her son have settled into post-divorce life. Frederica is the host of a nascent television multimedia talk show involving Alexander and Wilkie. Meanwhile, her parents are happy in retirement in a way they never were before, caring for her late sister's children. At North Yorkshire University, where Frederica had performed in 1953 in Alexander Wedderburn's Astraea, a mind-body conference is being planned, with the usual academic controversies, while radical students mass outside for an "Anti-University" that will of course clash with the official goings-on. Meanwhile, various psychology, neurology, and religious characters from previous books converge nearby on the site of a home that belonged to a family consumed by violence, and a strange sort of cult develops.

Pages and pages and pages are consumed with the developing psycho-religious thoughts of the people in and around the cult, and none too interestingly, in my view. We hear virtually nothing of Alexander and Wilkie, who were really interesting characters from the earlier books. Even Frederica herself is rather lost in the philosophical mess that takes over the book, and too much is told in little asides (such as that her ex-husband remarries and has more children, siblings of her son's that make him feel excluded). At the end, a few threads are tied up (Marcus goes to Cambridge with a lover, Will has a bad trip and presumably will stray no more, Saskia's father is revealed), and Frederica stands on the precipice of a new life, which doesn't seem to suit her at all. I'd wish for a fifth installment, but I'd be afraid it would be even more ponderously filled with philosophical debate, and anyway it says FINIS on the last page.

The armchair shrink in me, of course, suspects that Byatt ended here, with Frederica's son at age 10 since her own son died in an accident just as he was turning 11. I will note that Byatt writes more deeply and movingly of what it is like to lose a close family member than anyone else I have ever read. The first book has a minor character who lost a child in an accident, and the few paragraphs devoted to her are amazingly revealing. But more central than that, the ongoing grief of Daniel, Will, and Marcus over Stephanie's death are searing. The death itself is abrupt and shocking, as it should be, and the description of Daniel breaking the news to his child, and trying to keep himself from falling asleep and forgetting, even for an instant, that she's dead and gone so that he won't have to wake up and remember what has happened, strike me as coming from her deepest place as a writer.

[Jerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

What is important, she thought, is to defend reason against unreason.

So thinks the main character, Frederica Potter, the host of a television show that brings astrology to the masses.

Unlike the other books in the Frederica Quartet, this fourth installment requires reading the other books to know what’s going on. Many of the characters, who you are expected to already know, aren’t explained.

The majority of the story takes place in the sixties, from Christmas 1968 to a little after Christmas 1969. It has all of the great things from the sixties, from violent protests, anarchy, and religious cults to book-burning, both in the literal sense and in the figurative sense—although also occasionally literal—of the destruction of past knowledge because it isn’t useful to the revolution.

This is like a real-world echo of the previous book, Babel Tower, both in the microcosm of the religious cult that some of the previous characters join and in the macrocosm of the general intellectual background of the sixties.

As usual, there is a lot of obscure science and literary theory informing the characters’ lives. One of the weirdest is that, in Byatt’s sixties, there is a conflict among biologists over why we even have sex. Sex, according to her university researchers, wastes energy. Parthenogenesis, cloning, and budding are all more efficient and should thus be more genetically successful than the sexual reproduction that messes up so many of Byatt’s characters. Evolution theorists, say the scientists in this book, have no answer to that.

This “evolutionary enigma” is a real issue. But while the sixties were certainly a land of unreason, I’d be surprised if biologists did not already know the theory that sexual reproduction optimizes the compromise between passing on genes to offspring while also producing offspring that will be successful in unknown environments and unknown futures. Not only, according to this theory, is there an immediate benefit to an organism choosing a mate with successful characteristics to enhance their immediate offspring, there is also a long-term benefit to adding randomness to the gene line: under environmental stress, that randomness improves the chances of your line coming up with the solution to survival.

Her scientists seem completely unaware of this. It’s a weird lack when the rest of her characters seem to be well-versed in their fields.

Having finally finished the quartet, I would almost argue that Babel Tower is the best book to start with. But this has been a great series about some very interesting characters and times and all of the books are worth reading.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first time I read this book, I found it a fairly unsatisfactory ending to the Frederica Quartet. I will admit that I started the series in medias res with Babel Tower, the third book of the series. It was a boring summer and I had finally found a library with the Frederica Quartet - or part of it, at least. However, I re-read the series about a year and a half ago, in the proper order this time, and I was overwhelmed.

The second time I read this series - perhaps because I started at the beginning - I appreciated the series much more as a whole, rather than four fragmented novels that happen to have overlapping characters.

This novel is unsettling in many ways - Frederica, as with all the characters, are all in shifting states of being - in their roles, their identities. The introduction of a "saviour", Joshua Lamb, certainly shifts the focus to several secondary characters of other books. However, Byatt handles this shift to perfection, and I found myself as interested in the secondary characters as I was in Frederica's struggles and successes. Despite the shift from Frederica and her family to more secondary characters, I found the novel an incredibly compelling work and one that has drawn me back again and again.

[Cathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gave up in the middle.

This was just not what I want to read right now. As a book of a very particular history of late 60's thinking and society it is thought-provoking and insightful, perhaps. I wanted to read because it would give some insight into the time, the time I was conceived and know relatively little about. I found Byatt's writing less than appealing though, she does not write cleanly and as precisely as I like an author to do (when it comes to prose I am a short story reader at heart, to be fair). There are many interesting and provocative passages but I was grappling about to understand where the book was going and why I was dealing with blocks of different narrative that seemed like shuffled index cards elaborated upon in great detail. This is not to say I am not a fan of Byatt, I have enjoyed some of her other novels. Having not read the previous books of this quartet I felt at a disadvantage. Will let this one go back to the library for someone else to read.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

From BBc Radio 4-The Frederica Quartet:

24/30: Frederica resigns but makes a living by reviewing. Edmund has an idea for a heavier television programme.

25/30: Frederica has doubts about her television career and her brother, Marcus, makes a shocking discovery.

26/30: Frederica reignites an old flame, John, and her new TV series starts. Marcus finds a damsel in distress.

27/30: Daniel has difficulty communicating with Will and Lucy joins a disreputable religious commune.

28/30: The religious community in Yorkshire becomes cult-like under the influence of its charismatic leader.

29/30: Protesters disrupt the prestigious conference at the Yorkshire university where Luke is speaking.

30/30: Alexander hosts a play to raise cash for repairs and a fire at the farm has dire consequences.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007jsr3

[Francesca]

[in progress]

Una nota che mi porto dietro dal primo libro "La Vergine nel giardino", in cui Frederica "voleva, voleva, voleva".

"Frederica allora non sapeva che un giorno, camminando ormai anziana in una strada di Londra, si sarebbe detta con quasi assoluta certezza: sono arrivata al capolinea del desiderio."

E continuando la lettura, mi colpisce una frase che ricollego alla nota di cui sopra:

"Aveva voluto ogni cosa: l'amore, il sesso, la vita della mente. Aveva provato il matrimonio, aveva avuto Leo e guadagnava quanto le bastava per vivere."

[David]

Byatt, after three tries, remains for me a writer I just "don't get." I can see why some people lover her work, but I only ever find it mildly interesting. I generally don't much "like" any of her characters, or at the very least find them difficult to sympathize with on anything but a superficial level. I liked the sort-of 'random access' logic of Frederica's Through the Looking-Glass TV show, but generally found the theology/philosophy/psychology/herpetology and everything else rather disconcerting.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

The new book, A Whistling Woman has been a long time coming (and won't appear in the U.S. until December). While it avoids some of the ponderous over-stylization that made Babel Tower draggier than its predecessors, I found it disappointing as a conclusion to the series. Byatt devotes more attention to tying up small subplots from the previous books than she does to the main entanglements.

The book describes several parallel events: the merging of the Children of Joy and the Spirit's Tigers (two fringe religious groups from earlier books) into a dangerous cult under the charismatic leadership of a new character; protests at the North Yorkshire University and the eventual declaration of an "Anti-University;" Frederica's work as the host of an intellectual television program; the romantic and professional pursuits of Jacqueline Winwar and Luk Lysgaard-Peacock, scientists and friends of Marcus Potter. Several of the deepest and most idiosyncratic characters -- Daniel Orton and his children, and Marcus Potter -- have fallen off the map almost entirely.

The ending is particularly disappointing, a pat resolution to Frederica's romantic problems. If the reader has learned anything about Frederica, it's that she is not one to sacrifice her sexual freedom or "settle," and so the final scene, meant to confer a sense of permanence and peace, falls flat. Stranger yet, the other characters (particularly the academics) disapprove of Frederica's choice to work as a television host, to the extent that I perceive some criticism even from Byatt herself -- who previously had treated prickly Frederica with great sympathy.

This is not a book I would recommend to those new to the series, who probably couldn't follow even how the characters are connected. Anyone who enjoyed the earlier books will probably feel compelled to read it regardless of what reviewers say. Those readers should expect an exploration of ideas in the post-Possession style, but no new insight into the Potter family.

[Eleanor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as strong an offering as some others of Byatt's, mostly because there are just so many plot threads and characters and ideas to explore. But it is rich, thought-provoking and weirdly luxurious; the descriptive language is phenomenal as always, and the depiction of a therapeutic community that descends into cultic madness induces a fantastic creeping sense of unavoidable disaster. A fittingly interesting end to the Frederica Quartet.

[Jim Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed this book with it's huge cast of well defined characters, giving a fascinating insight into intellectual, literary and religious circles in 60's and 70's Britain. Had previously read Byatt's "Babel's Tower" and this sequel is equally intriguing and enjoyable.
Byatt stimulates the Reader's intellectual curiosity and often had me reaching for Wikpedia to check referenced authors and philosopher. A demanding and rewarding work!

[Rahul Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

And with this Federica Potter's story comes to a close. I read Babeltower last year in October and kept putting this book away because I couldn't bear the quartet to end for me. This year, I had decided that in October, I am going to put my tantrum aside and finish it as slowly as possible. Over the last week, I have carried this book around to places that seemed to come to life from the book itself. I thought I'd keep reading Federica, now at 33, over a long period of time but alas, I could barely stop myself from dishing out the novel and consuming the chapters in sumptuous chunks. Federica is tired of her students' disinterest with the awakening of the anti-university campaigns. She gets offered to interview experts for television on topics ranging from literature, psychoanalysis, feminism, science, to bird and animals. She is awkward but she makes a great host. At the university back at her home, a conference is being organised and a cult seems to be coming to life. One thing leads to another, and soon we find ourselves in a novel of love, ideas, friendships, rage, disappointments and radicalism. I savoured every page, every detail as my body was being transported from one place to another with the pages. I could scarcely control my elation and gratitude at the peace I felt to be between the pages of an A.S. Byatt book and characters who had grown on me so emotionally since 2022. I read the first book in 2022 and now 2 years later, I am through with a series of novels that were published between 1978-2002. These novels saw Byatt through her literary career. I cannot thank @AntonHur for tweeting about this series in 2022 that got me interested in it. The books have changed me. They have found themselves deep inside my mind, my heart, in what has made me evolve as a reader and a scholar. These books are not the easiest to read but once you let Byatt tell you a story, you will be inspired to think. Yes, like Federica, at the heart of the novel, that is what it is, the hunger to engage in thought, to not let words just get past you without having spent some time on it. I look forward to re-reading the series in the years to come. I am so excited at the thought of reentering this massive yet very small world of a family who are tired of each other and yet would want nothing but to bring themselves together and quietly admit their small loves, kindnesses and gratitude. I hope you are happy Federica, Marcus and Stephanie, wherever you are. I love you.

[Paul The Uncommon Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe it was a mistake...

... to read all four of these novels so close to each other. I read all four within, I think nine months. Which sounds like a long time, but I have to say that I got a bit overblown with the density of Byatt's writing by about half way through this last one. For it is, once, again, a complex novel, and this time I didn't really feel that the plot was riveting – or cohesive – enough to maintain my patience with Byatt's exploration of what are sometimes pretty oblique (and very disparate) ideas. Tangents are all very well, and I can tolerate them up to a point (especially when I can understand, grasp them (which is not always the case, especially the biological and mathematical strands here), but when they last so long that for chapters on end we don't see Frederica (whom I really like), or when the plot is revealed through obscure letters... And that's how it was with this one. I wanted to hear less about snail shell patterns and Charles Manson-type cults narrated to me via letters written by someone whose role and name I had missed (there are a lot of them!). Either they have been hidden from me by a combination of (in my view) far too many plots going on, or (I admit) my memory and patience levels are perhaps not what they ought (and used) to be. Either way, my reading is spoiled when I am not treated to more of the main plot concerning Frederica, her life and loves. And what was the Peacock–Jacqueline thing? That was where I wanted to see Frederica and the Ottokar twins!!

Which isn't to say that there aren't some beautiful truths (observations) in the mass of plot that Byatt creates. Take this, for example:

'All human beings tell their life stories to themselves, selecting and reinforcing certain memories, casing others into oblivion. All human beings are interested in causation. Because I had a good Latin teacher, ... , I became a theologian, and because I chose Latin, I put aside the sciences of earth, flesh and space. All human beings are interested in pure coincidence, which can act in a life as surely as causation, and appear to resemble that, as though both were equally the effects of a divine putting-on.'

But then, later in the same paragraph, there comes this, which I find rather too sonorous:
A man ... who has found himself tumbling in the dark sea outside the terrible transparent mirror of the fragile window pane, persists perhaps by linking moments of conscious survival into a fine suspension-bridge of a personal destiny, a narrow path of constructed light, arching out over the bulging and boiling.

That's just too much for me. And when you think that she's kind of trying to define a man's consciousness, in a similar way to how the University of Yorkshire is trying to come up with an all-round, all encompassing education system, it's all a bit much – unless, of course, by burning the place down later in the novel, she is saying that these are pointless, vainglorious, Icarus-like attempts to understand everything.

I just think that the novel loses its way a bit – though I am prepared to admit that my levels of concentration weren't always up to it – which they might have been if I hadn't been so bent on completing the quartet.

There are more down-to-earth discussions, about Leo's dyslexia, for example, and how a phonic approach to reading and rote learning ought to be the solution. (I think that Byatt is ruing the trend in teaching to abandon the rote learning of letters (alphabet) and numbers (multiplication tables) because they are 'boring' – her counter-argument to this being that the acquisition of knowledge will always be enough to motivate learning. I'm guessing that she has never been a primary school teacher – sometimes her prism is pretty elitist – and arguably pretty naive)...

So although I think that for me the book ultimately fails, I'm still left gasping for breath at the end, full of admiration for this writer. Perhaps a more apt metaphor for me is of a meal. Byatt has served up lots of delicious food. She is a cook that knows her craft and has access to top quality ingredients that, with the right blend and skill (practice), will make sumptuous dishes. It's just that sometimes when you get to the dessert, which this book perhaps is, you find that you are already full and a rich, complicated trifle with so many different ingredients that the tastes get all mixed up with each other is, rather perplexingly, not as satisfying as, I don't know, maybe just a wholesome, simple piece of fruit.

But A.S. Byatt has cooked plenty of other meals. I suspect that this one was more for herself than for her readers (which I think is totally OK – you can't please all of the people all of the time anyway). The one for her readers (and the one designed to out-do her sister, I suspect), remains "Possession", which I absolutely loved, though I can see, now that I have read this quartet, that for this deeply intellectual novelist, that that book is riddled with compromises – she wanted a big seller, and was determined to show everyone that she could write one. Just, possibly, not entirely on her own terms. Which might be bothering her a little.

The quartet is an ambitious, arching cathedral of work. The result of four decades of the author's observations, thoughts and research – above all, research. The life of the mind, condensed into four novels. A panoply of characters, a compendium of plots. From two sisters and their family (you have to think of Lawrence's "The Rainbow" and its sequel, "Women in Love", which I must re-read), to Cambridge intellectuals, northern scientists, schizophrenic visionaries (prophets), mathematical geniuses, literary geniuses, teachers, television personalities, judges, divorce lawyers, mean husbands, desperately kind husbands, ... an almost endless list of people who represent many, many interests and levels of British society in the second half of the 20th Century.

I just searched "The Rainbow" online and found its closing sentence. It’s pretty impressive:
She saw in the rainbow the earth's new architecture, the old, brittle corruption of houses and factories swept away, the world built up in a living fabric of Truth, fitting to the over-arching heaven.

I think that Byatt maybe shared that vision, and that this impressive, awe-inspiring quartet of novels is perhaps, amongst many other things, her contribution to that.

Vivid, clear colours of experience and of intellectual disciplines forming an all-unifying arch of beauty, understanding and reconciliation.

The quartet is a brave and impressive achievement. And, above all, an optimistic one. Bravo!

[Helen McClory · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted more years of Frederica's life, more pushing forward, and that is my own problem. Still, well written and interesting throughout.

[sezen]

An understated, but fiercely intelligent book. Very glad to have read it.

[Richard Pierce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yet another astounding piece of work. The story wraps itself around you. Such skill. And brilliantly written.

[Майя Ставитская · Rating 4 out of 5]

The fourth and final novel of the Frederica Quartet, the translation of which the Atticus Alphabet began to delight us in 2021, when the world was completely different, the cavalier lady Antonia Bayette was alive, and in my reading asset only her "Possessions". In the fall of 2025: "Virgo in the Garden", the first book of the Quartet, in the Yasnaya Polyana short, the world changed (radically), and I saw the writer off on her last journey, and I read everything that can be found in Russian, and this book in English. Although I refused to read Byatt in the original, the sumptuous redundancy of her prose makes the imperfection of my reading English all too obvious.

A brief background. "The Frederica Quartet" covers a time span of twenty-four years, and it took the same amount of time for the writer to work on it. This tetralogy is considered Antonia Bayette's magnum opus, although other works have won her prestigious literary awards. Perhaps it's a matter of specifics, the four books were really written for a very long time with long breaks. But something also forced the writer to return to the story and the characters over and over again. At the center of the first book, "The Maid in the Garden," is the Potter family: the furious Bill, a rare combination of teaching and organizational talents at work and a domestic tyrant in the family; his selfless wife, Winnifred; the angelic eldest daughter, Stephanie; the furious youngest, Frederica; and the partially autistic son, Marcus.

The death of Stephanie, by that time Daniel's happy wife and mother of two children, at the end of The Living Thing, the second book of the tetralogy, comes as a shock to all family members. Marcus blames himself for his sister's death and closes himself in self-destructive guilt. Daniel leaves the children with his father-in-law and mother-in-law and goes nowhere. Frederica, a popular Oxbridge student, jumps out to marry a guy who seems reliable, but turns out to be quite a gift. In the third book, The Tower of Babel, attention is already focused mainly on her: leaving her husband, trying to build a teaching career, a lawsuit with a rich and powerful ex-spouse for custody of her son Leo, which Frederica wins in the final.

"Whistling Woman" - I'm not sure what will be translated that way if we see the book, but the transcription is already in the epigraph: "A whistling woman and a crowing chicken are not liked by either God or people." That's what the writer's grandmother said, explaining that a woman should not try to play a male role in the family and society - in fact, what the heroine has to do. The novel begins with an excerpt from an insert novella typical of Bayette's work, an author's fairy tale composed for children by Frederica's friend, writer Agatha, who also plays on the theme of "whistlers", which are women who drive everyone crazy with whistling (by the way, human speech reproduced with very high acceleration seems to be whistling and chirping, perhaps someone just learned how to exchange information, an order of magnitude faster). In the fairy tale, it is the bookish boy, the "nerd", the prince, who manages to understand the whistlers and save the companions from death. And Agatha says that she wrote it for bookish children, whose rating in teen companies is not too high. What the heroine failed to achieve, J. K. Rowling will be more successful at the beginning of the next century, but that will be a different story.

Let's get back to ours. Frederica, who was forced to give up teaching at college - it's the end of the sixties, student unrest, rallies, slogans and other "choral singing". Students don't want to study, but want to go into politics, for the heroine, who left her husband rather not because he was walking around and infected with an STD, not even because he was chasing with an axe, but because he tried to deprive her of the opportunity to live an intense intellectual life - for her, all this rebellion is primarily stupidity. and laziness. But it's not just the loudmouthed protesters who love this time, smart, charismatic and, as it turned out, telegenic women are also in demand.Frederica is invited as a guest first, and when it becomes clear how much the camera loves her, how organic and natural she is in the frame, she is the co-host of a talk show for intellectuals.

In this "Through the Looking Glass" she is such a femme Alice, adored by the female part of the audience and hated (not without lust) by the male. And here it is worth saying that this part of the tetralogy, unfortunately, is the most uninteresting. Byatt, who generally tends to novels of ideas, but managed to step on the throat of her own song in the "Living Thing" for the sake of "make me interested" here let herself go free. A sea of arguments on the topics of education, politics, biology, genetics, art, intellectually saturated, but emotionally neutral. She's a genius, and she won't leave us without intrigue. There will be an "anti-university" rebellion towards the end and a terrible story with a sect almost in the finale, but I will not talk about this here, if anyone is interested, I will answer personally.

And, leading off to the coda, Dame Antonia ends with what she began - Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale" - a tragedy with a dubiously happy, but still happy ending, where Mary, Stephanie's daughter, plays and who gathers all the Potters at the premiere. There will also be a separate bonus for Frederica, whom we will leave 34-year-old, accomplished and a little pregnant. I understand. that time is not easy these days, and the completely innocent pages of Markus' part (there are not many of them, but they are there) will either have to be blacked out or cut, which will harm the book.

But still I do not lose hope of reading it in the Russian translation. The translators in the cycle are excellent.

Финал "Квартета Фредерики"
Времена, когда начало реформ внушало надежду, которая в наши дни угасла.
Четвертый, заключительный роман "Квартета Фредерики", переводом которого Азбука Аттикус начала нас радовать в 2021, когда мир был совсем другим, кавалерственная дама Антония Байетт жива, а в моем читательском активе лишь ее "Обладать". Осенью 2025: "Дева в саду", первая книга Квартета - в шорте Ясной поляны, мир изменился (радикально), и проводил писательницу в последний путь, а я прочла у нее все, что можно найти на русском, и вот эту книгу на английском. Хотя и зарекалась читать Байетт в оригинале, роскошная избыточность ее прозы делает слишком очевидным несовершенство моего читательского английского.

Краткая предыстория. "Квартет Фредерики" охватывает временной промежуток в двадцать четыре года и столько же времени взяла работа над ним у писательницы. Эту тетралогию считают magnum opus Антонии Байетт, хотя престижные литературные премии принесли ей другие работы. Возможно дело в специфике, писалось четырехкнижие действительно, очень долго с длительными перерывами. Но что-то же заставляло писательницу раз за разом возвращаться к истории и героям. В центре первой книги "Дева в саду" семья Поттеров: неистовый Билл, редкое сочетание педагогического и организаторского талантов на работе и домашний тиран в семье; его самоотверженная супруга Уиннифред, старшая дочь ангелоподобная Стефани, младшая яростная Фредерика, и сын Маркус, отчасти аутист.

Гибель Стефани, к тому времени счастливой жены Дэниэла и мамы двоих детей, в конце "Живой вещи", второй книги тетралогии, становится потрясением для всех членов семьи. Маркус винит в смерти сестры себя и замыкается в саморазрушительном чувстве вины. Дэниэл оставляет детей тестю с тещей и уходит в никуда. Фредерика, популярная оксбриджская студентка, выскакивает замуж за парня, который кажется надежным, но на поверку оказывается тем еще подарком. В третьей книге "Вавилонская башня", внимание уже сосредоточено в основном на ней: уход от мужа, попытка строить преподавательскую карьеру, судебная тяжба с богатым и могущественным экс-супругом за право опеки над сыном Лео, которую Фредерика в финале выигрывает.

"Свистящая женщина" - не уверена, что переведут именно так, если мы увидим книгу, но расшифровка уже в эпиграфе: "Свистяшая женщина и кукарекающая курица не нравятся ни Богу, ни людям". Так говорила бабушка писательницы, поясняя, что женщина не должна пытаться играть мужскую роль в семье и обществе - собственно то, что приходится делать героине. Роман начинается с отрывка характерной для творчества Байетт вставной новеллы - авторской сказки, которую сочиняет для детей подруга Фредерики писательница Агата, так же обыгрывающая тему "свистуний", которые здесь птице-женщины, сводящие всех с ума свистом (кстати, человеческая речь, воспроизведенная с очень большим ускорением, кажется свистом и щебетом, возможно кто-то просто научился обмениваться информацией, на порядок быстрее). В сказке понять свистуний и спасти от смерти спутников удается именно книжному мальчику, "ботану", принцу. И Агата говорит, что писала ее для книжных детей, чей рейтинг в подростковых компаниях не слишком высок. Что не удалось героине, с тем в начале следующего века окажется более удачливой Джоан Роулинг, но то будет другая история.

Вернемся к нашей. Фредерика, вынужденная отказаться от преподавания в колледже - на дворе конец шестидесятых, студенческие волнения, митинги, лозунги и прочее "хоровое пение". Студенты не хотят про учебу, а желают в политику, для героини же, которая и мужа оставила скорее не потому, что погуливал и заразил ЗПП, даже не потому, что гнался с топором, но потому, что пытался лишить ее возможности жить интенсивной интеллектуальной жизнью - для нее все это бунтарство в первую очередь тупость и лень. Но это время любит не только митингующих горлопанов, умные харизматичные и, как выяснилось - телегеничные женщины в нем тоже востребованы.Фредерику приглашают в качестве сначала гостьи, а когда становится ясно, как любит ее камера, как органична и естественна она в кадре - соведущей ток-шоу для интеллектуалов.

В этом "Зазеркалье" она такая фем-Алиса, обожаемая женской частью аудитории и ненавидимая (не без вожделения) мужской. И вот тут стоит сказать, что эта часть тетралогии, как ни грустно, самая неинтересная. Байетт, вообще тяготеющая к романам идей, но сумевшая в "Живой вещи" наступить на горло собственной песне ради "сделай мне интересно" здесь отпустила себя на волю. Море рассуждений на темы образования, политики, биологии, генетики, искусства, интеллектуально насыщенных, но эмиционально нейтральных. Она таки гений и совсем без интриги нас не оставит. Будет мятеж "антиуниверситета" ближе к концу и жуткая история с сектой почти в финале, но об этом я здесь рассказывать не буду, если кому интересно, отвечу лично.

И, уводя на коду, дама Антония завершает тем, чем начала - "Зимняя сказка" Шекспира - трагедия с сомнительно счастливым, и все же счастливым концом, где играет Мэри, дочь Стефани, и которая собирает на премьере всех Поттеров. Будет еще отдельный бонус для Фредерики, которую мы оставим 34-летней, состоявшейся и немного беременной. Я понимаю. что время нынче непростое, и совершенно невинные страницы части Маркуса (их немного, но они есть) придется либо заблюривать, либо резать, что навредит книге.

Но все-таки не теряю надежды перечесть в русском переводе. Переводчики у цикла превосходные.

[Karl Steel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book.

My only real complaint is that Byatt doesn't show what happens when the police break up the demonstration at the variously titled NYU or UNY (North Yorkshire University). She's led us to despise the spiritualist, romantic, medievalist, Tolkienite excesses of the late 60s American/European student movement, while, yes, complicating matters somewhat by witnessing to its responsibility for the incipient animal liberation movement and cui bono critiques of reason. But when the students and their comrades assault NYU/UNY, smashing Elizabethan artifacts, vandalizing public sculpture, burning down ancient manors, stupidly demanding an end to the requirement that its students learn, all for their undergraduate degree, another language, math, and the humanities,* when they sing Ent-songs and psychedelic lyrics, give astrology lectures, and basically nauseate thinking people, by which I mean me, it would have been important to complicate all this by showing the police cracking their heads. Some readers would have cheered that on, too, but I suspect most would have felt accused by the sight of the foundations of their liberal world, revealed.

Instead we get some lovemaking.

* see this excellent point, where Frederica attends an interdisciplinary conference on the mind: "Frederica had expected to find these literary papers the most interesting. She had grown up in the narrow British educational system which divides like a branching tree, and predestines all thirteen-year-olds to be either illiterate or innumerate (if not both). She had grown up with the assumption that be literary is to be quick, perceptive and subtle. Whereas scientists were dull, and also--in the nuclear age--quite possibly dangerous and destructive. She thought of F. R. Leavis's Education and the University, which she had studied, and which had said that the English Department was at the centre of any educational endeavour. This suddenly seemed, as she listened to [D.H.:] Lawrence's dangerous nonsense abstracted from Lawrence's lively drama and held up for approval, to be nothing more than a Darwinian jockeying for advantage, a territorial snarl and dash.

What was important, she thought, is to defend reason against unreason."

[Lorraine · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fantastic conclusion to this series of books. I remain in awe of Byatt's skill as a writer. The previous books are bookended with glimpses into the future and then settle into a narrative that happened in the past. This book doesn't begin that way, and the reader slowly realizes that this book is taking place in the future that starts and ends the previous three; there's a wonderful moment where Byatt takes you full-circle back to the very beginning book and shows you a moment happening in that future scene from a different perspective. So very well done and makes me believe she had all four books plotted out before she ever put pen to paper for the first.

Again, way too much child harm in this book for my tastes; fortunately, it was not belabored, but still. Too much. If I wasn't already way to0 invested in this series not to finish it, I would have had serious reservations about doing so.

There's an element of repressed violence throughout the whole thing. Some of the characters have gone to live in what amounts to a religious cult, and the narrative is clearly building to some terrible end. I love that feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop and wondering exactly what form the terror will take.

The novel is set against the backdrop of the late sixties with students protesting everything from war to institutions of education themselves. It manages to acknowledge the ways in which these protests are ridiculous and meaningless exercises as well as the ways in which they are reasoned arguments for needed change. Byatt also touches on an issue very pertinent today: who should be allowed to speak on a college campus? Should students be able to silence voices with which they disagree?

I absolutely adore that Byatt ends the novel exactly the way she ends Agatha's novel that she reads aloud to Leo and Saskia: right in the thick of things, en medias res, with no true conclusion and everything up in the air, which is as it should be. I don't want Frederica to be neatly concluded with all the threads tied off. That ending is a brilliant piece of craftsmanship.

I highly recommend the Potter Quartet. I want to write like A.S. Byatt when I grow up, but in the interim, I'll settle for reading the original. :)

[Murray · Rating 4 out of 5]

A.S. Byatt demands attention, especially in the audiobook format. She is deeply learned in all areas of study and fils every page with thought provoking forays into philosophy, psychology, history, science and, especially, literature.
Upon finishing this book I could easily loop back again and again to capture its fullness.
In the novel, it is said "A whistling woman and a crowing hen is an abomination to the Lord." According to my resources, no such scripture can be found. There are British and American takes on the saying—“a whistling woman and a crowing hen are neither fit for God nor men” is a traditional British saying, while its American variation claims that “a whistling woman and a crowing hen never come to a very good end.” Whatever the specifics of origin, the intent is clear—women should let the men do the talking, especially in the world of academics.
This intricate, complicated look at the turmoil of the 60s in British academia centers on Frederica Potter, no relation to Harry that I know.
She, an artist/thinker and single mother is given a chance to have a think show, Through the Looking Glass, on British TV.
Suffice to say, roils and boils in the cauldron of radical change that mark the times scald everyone in her vicinity.
Utterly fascinating and fulfilling. My mind has been exercised, thoroughly.

[Marianna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a love/hate relationship with the Frederica quartet. On the one hand, once started, I cannot put them down. It's like an intellectual soap opera; everyone is so special and everyone loves everyone because they're all ever so special and brilliant. On the other hand, they provide sheer narrative pleasure, much like a soap opera. My favorite character has always been brash, bold, "brilliant" yet stupid Frederica, and I really felt that Byatt did the character of Frederica a disservice with the ending of her quartet. After all she worked for, after building two different lives for herself, she found herself trapped by her biology? As if. the character of Frederica is not alone in her trite, forced end. It felt that Byatt was tired of all of them, and they all fell victim to the same trite, tied-up and tidy end, in which of course, everyone loves everyone because they are all ever so boringly special.

But, like any good soap opera, it remains a guilty pleasure. The best part about this soap opera is that there are no commercials. Actually, that's the only good part.

[Peter B · Rating 2 out of 5]

This took a long time to read because I didn’t ever really get involved with it. I am not sure what the plot really was—Frederica who came to find love with Luc Peacock at the end of the story which sort of began the novel or the anti-university and the “revolution” or all the other things which sort of were written about. I think that Byatt really wanted the opportunity to explore a whole range of philosophical issues which she did through the medium of describing the television show but I don’t know where the plot was hidden. It seemed at one point that the “mad” Joshua Ramsden was going to be the focal point but he simply ended up being burned to death with no real conclusion to his personal tragedy. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

[Ria · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a lover of linguistics, Byatt outdid herself in this book. Words and science, combined with religious cults and fairy-tales.

However, I find the elaborate description of a religious leader maniac somewhat too much! It reminds me too much of the stream-of-consciousness passages used in Modernist writing which, as everyone knows, gives no plot. The characters in the book are taken to the realm of parrody, mirroring Fredericka's TV shows.

As usual, there are hidden things one can discover for oneself, words which are more than their apparent meanings make.

I love this book less than Babel Tower. Nevertheless, it is a very worthwhile book to read!

[David Llewellyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

A Whistling Woman is the fourth book in the 'Frederica Quartet'. It is billed as a stand-alone novel but there are characters and storylines that appear here that have their genesis in earlier volumes. Perhaps it would be best to start from the beginning.
While there is much to admire Byatt's writing I don't think I have ever come across a novelist as keen to show off their research - not an ounce of wasted effort as everything from snails, zygotes and psychiatry gets more than a mention while adding little to the plot or the pace.
I'm sure there's a good story in here but, for my taste, it is still to be whittled out of the wordy book I read.

[Emmett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm done and I might cry. So full to spilling are these feelings, is this heart. (Somehow, everyone is somehow happy.) So stirring with thoughts is this mind. An immensely erudite and enjoyable series sweeps to a graceful, bowing, denouement. The camera-eye scans the contented scene, captures them in a single frame, then quietly leaves the characters to their own worlds, their own selves.

[Gavin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm admittedly something of a Byatt fanboy (except for The Children's Book), but even so, this was an amazing book, a perfect end to the Frederica Quartet.

Something I was thinking about while I read this book is how Byatt is not really a flashy author, which many of my favorites are. You don't really get the pyrotechnics of Joyce, Calvino, or Nabokov. But every part joins together to make this amazing edifice -- on a sentence level, the writing is beautiful; the characters feel very real, with their self-contradictory aspects, their uncertainty, and also how their self-images differ so much from how others see them; the themes weave in and out of the story, sometimes looked at analytically, sometimes more mythically, and sometimes a bit humorously.

As to the book itself... This felt like a great capstone to the "Frederic Quartet." For one thing, it contains references to the others, more or less obvious (the opening scene in the first book makes an oblique appearance; Babel Tower contains a book within the book about a community that separates itself from the world, and here we have a "real-life" community that does exactly that; and so on). In addition, there's a sense of conclusion at the end that feels very earned -- we've followed these characters through a long journey, and they all come to some sort of resting point. I don't want to call it an end-point, because it's not all resolved in some deus ex machina, but the various threads do come to a natural place to stop.

In addition, late in the book, Alexander stages The Winter's Tale, which gives us a little chance to think about endings and reconciliations. The Winter's Tale came toward the end of Shakespeare's career -- some see the late plays a kind of farewell. After A Whistling Woman, Byatt had only one more long work (The Children's Book) -- it makes me wonder if she was also putting a sort of farewell into this book as well.