In two breathtakingly accomplished novellas, A.S. Byatt explores the landscape of Victorian England, where science and spiritualism are both popular manias, and domestic decorum coexists with brutality and perversion.
In "Morpho Eugenia", a shipwrecked naturalist is rescued by a family whose clandestine passions come to seem as inscrutable as the behavior of insects. In "The Conjugial Angel," a circle of fictional mediums finds itself haunted by the ghost of a very real historical personage.
Angels & Insects offers further proof of Byatt's prodigious powers and magical sympathy for characters who might be our great-great-grandparents.
[May's] is a gifted storyteller's voice, perfect for a tale of Victorian England, full of expectation and interest in the wonderments of what she has to say.
A. S. BYATT was educated at York and at Newham College, Cambridge. She taught at the Central School of Art and Design and was senior lecturer in English at University College, London, before becoming a full-time writer in 1983. She is a distinguished critic and reviewer as well as a novelist.
