Rich, acerbic, and wise, A Whistling Woman is the ambitious novel of ideas we've come to expect from Byatt, and tackles nothing less than what it means to be human' Vogue
This intoxicating novel stands on its own, while forming a triumphant conclusion to A. S. Byatt's great quartet depicting the clashing forces in English life from the early 1950s to 1970. While Frederica falls almost by accident into a career in television in London, tumultuous events in her home county of Yorkshire threaten to change her life, and those of the people she loves. Through her wayward, lovingly-drawn characters and breath-taking twists of plot, Byatt illuminates the effervescence of the 1960s - both its excitements and its dangers - as no one has done before. Magical and thought-provoking, and with spine-chilling moments, A Whistling Woman is the ultimate novel of ideas made flesh - gloriously sensual, sexy and scary, bursting with ideas, and wonderful humanity.
Author ProfileA. S. Byatt is internationally acclaimed as a novelist, short story writer and critic. Her most recent novel, outside this tetralogy, is The Biographer's Tale. Educated at York and Newnham College, Cambridge, she taught at the Central School of Art and Design, and was Senior lecturer in English at University College, London, before becoming a full-time writer in 1983. She was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999.
ReviewsA vast, intricate and highly readable tale of intellectual curiosity spanning the tensions between ideas and religion, science and television, anarchy and the intellectual establishment, the counterculture and academia, visionaries and madness The hothouse atmosphere of experimentation and the quest for new ways of seeing and being is tackled with questioning perception.
