Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Ack  . Sounds distinctly "allegorical". Not my favourite style of writing at all. |
On re-reading I'm not even sure I agree with myself
I'm not good at explaining this. You make me think of 'The Trial' and it's definitely not like that. What I think I really think about her characters, are that they are mostly not wholly likeable. I think Byatt is showing us whole humans, with both good and bad sides - as most of us has. How many people do you know that has no bad sides and are perfectly good and likeable all of the time. We get impatient and lose our temper, we forget things, sometimes we use other people, sometimes we don't do things we ought to or deliberately look to the other side because it's easier. We're fallible. I think we mostly gloss over these imperfections in the people we meet, because it's makes everything easier and is normal civilised behaviour and we don't think about ourselves doing it either. Byatt exposes these rougher edges of people along with their positive traits. It makes in my opinion for actually well-rounded characters, but they also often aren't all that easily likeable.