Winner

By Paul Gray

POSSESSION: A ROMANCE

by A.S. Byatt

Random House; 555 pages; $22.95

This novel comes to the U.S. trailing clouds of glory. On Oct. 16 A.S. Byatt's Possession won the Booker Prize, Britain's most ballyhooed and prestigious literary award, for the year's best novel, beating out works by such well-known nominees as Brian Moore, Beryl Bainbridge and Mordecai Richler. Three days later, in Dublin, Byatt picked up the Irish Times/Aer Lingus international fiction prize. The take from both awards added up to about $82,000.

Now American readers who know of Byatt, if at all, as the elder sister of Margaret Drabble will have the chance to see what all the acclaim is about. Literary juries have, of course, tossed garlands at turkeys before, but that has not happened this time. Possession is a genuine winner.

The plot revolves around two young British academics who seem ill suited to adventure. Roland Mitchell does plodding research on the Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash; Maud Bailey, a dedicated feminist, is interested in another 19th century poet, Christabel LaMotte. (Neither Ash nor LaMotte existed, but Byatt creates excerpts from their imaginary poems and journals that bring them vibrantly alive.) Roland stumbles across a tantalizing fragment of evidence that the respectably married Ash and the spinster LaMotte may have had an illicit affair; such an event, if proved, would set the scholarly world on its ear. Before long, he and Maud join forces to track down the truth.

This journey proves far more exciting than either anticipates. Competitors appear, with vested interests in the poets' reputations, who want Roland and Maud to fail. What is more, the investigators are drawn into a pattern that eerily resembles the story they are trying to piece together. Questions about Ash and LaMotte become questions about Roland and Maude.

Byatt, 54, has acknowledged the influence of Umberto Eco and John Fowles on her work, and traces of The Name of the Rose and The French Lieutenant's Woman are easy to find. But its manifest intelligence, subtle humor and extraordinary texturing of the past within the present make Possession an original, and unforgettable, contribution.