I am reading, as I mentioned long before, Possession: A Romance, by A.S. Byatt. Illness made me weak, and so I turned to comforting Lloyd Alexander books to feed my little brain. Then I consumed the first four Harry Potter books, in the British editions that my mom had lent me. I am only now getting back to Possession.

I like the book, I do, but it is very hard to read. The narrative moves from the main characters to the letters they unearth from the 19th century, to literary criticism and literary biography excerpts, to poems at the front of each chapter. Then you add in 19th c. journals, narrative threads about the ancillary and competitive modern-day scholars, and one’s head begins to ache. She does all this beautifully—and it is ironic that she dubs one of her imaginary poets “The Great Ventriloquist”, as she assumes more than a dozen very different voices throughout the book.

I feel that in reading the book I am building an edifice of some sort. I labor in one corner of the foundation, then buttress up that side - the author hands me the materials and tells me where to put them. I can tell as I go that the building is beautiful, lofty and yet solid - but I cannot read too far without making my mental “arms” tired. It’s not that I need to mull things over, digest the work—it’s just that I am tired. However, I have little doubt that when I’m done, I will dust my hands off and feel proud of what we built.