Product Details
The Shadow of the Sun

The Shadow of the Sun
By A.S. Byatt

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Product Description

This is the debut novel by the author of the bestselling Possession. Byatt tells the story of troubled, sensitive seventeen-year-old Anna Severell, who struggles to discover and develop her own personality in the shadow of her father, a renowned novelist. New Introduction by the Author.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #613965 in Books
  • Published on: 1993-04-16
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 324 pages

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

A.S. Byatt, author of the Booker Prize-winning Possession is a distinguished novelist, critic, editor, and lecturer. She is the author of six novels, two linked novellas, and four short story collections, in addition to The Shadow of the Sun. She has taught English and American literature at University College in London. She lives in London.

Customer Reviews

A.S. Byatt's first novel4
This is a great read for any fan of British novelist and critic A.S. Byatt. It's her first novel, written as an undergraduate (and reworked a few yrs later when she was a young mother.) She was obviously passionate, perceptive, brainy, busy, and full of life.The protagonist Anna notices, thinks about, and feels things -- intensely. The autobiographical story is interesting, and less deeply upholstered than Byatt's subsequent novels. The narrator's immediacy is compelling, and the young woman's struggles to define herself within (and separate from) her intellectually consuming and powerful family are well drawn. Lots of 'characters,' the Byatt ear for speech and eye for the telling detail. Memorable escapades and love affairs, too It's intense and brimming with energy and life.

Over-wrought first effort1
It has been a long time since I read a novel I disliked as heartily as this one, which is a shame, because I loved her other novels. Some of the writing is marvelous, but these long Jamesian introspections are excruciating. Find it hard to sympathize with the protagonist, and she continues to make bad decisions at the end.