This was a wonderful experience, and I don't know where to begin in describing it. These pages contain a mystery, a Victorian romance, a present day story of literary competition between scholars, and a modern romance. It highlights the differences between the two times in fascinating ways, and also demonstrates how silences can be the biggest clues.

Byatt creates two Victorian poets who seem so real that I looked up their names, wondering if this novel were based on anyone specific. That the author created the poems and letters of Christabel LaMotte and Randolph Henry Ash, with such believable detail, is brillant.

The cast of this story is wonderful, too. Of course, the author would have vast experience with other literary scholars and know how to draw them! Maud Bailey and Roland Mitchell, who are central to the modern plot, are both very likable people. Each, in the beginning, is concentrating on different poets and so do not come into contact until Roland makes a surprising discovery about a link between the two, something that was not known before by the literary community.

And so the story begins...I thoroughly enjoyed complex, dense novel that keeps turning such interesting corners!