This is A S Byatt's first published novel for 7 years. Like the Booker Prize-winning Possession: a True Romance, The Children's Book sets the personal history of an entangled set of semi-fictional characters within an intricate portrait of a historical era.

The Children's Book is a fantastic read: a modern day saga describing the fortunes of a number of interlinked families growing up in the years between the end of the Victorian era and the beginning of the Great War. This is a neglected period in fiction writing, and the author provides an impeccably researched insight into this time. Important threads running through the book include human morality, sexuality, family life and parenting, politics and violence: rich seams, many of which are evocative of the industrial heritage which runs through the book as a ‘sidescape’. The novel is obsessed with visualisation and rich in description, with its underworld …