Indigestible Possession

For the first time in a long, long time I have put away a book without finishing it. The book was A.S. Byatt's award-winning Possession and my major reservations were its unbearable verbosity and the subject matter I felt no connection with whatsoever.

I was quickly put off by the idea of weaving a full 600-page novel from a scholarly pursuit of two second-rate literature academics into the minute secrets of Victorian poetry, but muddled through for a third of the volume. It was extremely rich in form, alternating between contemporary narration, poetry and historic correspondence, and in references to literary heritage, whose nuances I could hardly find my way through.

At the moment, Possession feels indigestible and overwhelming to me.

language to remember:
1. a card index = kartoteka,
2. a tomcat = a male cat or a womaniser,
3. do something for harsh necessity,
4. the finest silk cloth,
5. a keepsake = something given or kept as a token of friendship,
6. Arachne is the goddess of crafts,
7. a haberdasher = a dealer in small things, esp. men's clothes
8. If things get on top of me,
9. avarice = insatiable greed for riches,
10. fastidious = hard to please, critical and demanding,
11. a bust of = popiersie,
12. pewter = stop cyny z ołowiem,
13. He was a block of ice,
14. feckless = lacking in efficiency, unthinking and irresponsible,
15. sense your growing irrelevance,
16. understand my own hieroglyphics,
17. a treasure trove,
18. stand-offish = cold and aloof,
19. wolds = an open, hilly district,
20. mittens, long johns, balaclava,
21. He departed, with no regrets on either side,
22. huge haunches = duże biodra/uda,
23. Lazarus,
24. a vestibule = przedsionek.