A triumphant success on every level * Cosmopolitan * Teeming with more ideas than a year's worth of ordinary novels * Spectator * This is a novel for every taste: a heartbreaking Victorian love story, a take-no-prisoners comedy of contemporary academic life, and an unputdownable supernatural mystery. You turn the last page feeling stunned and elated, happy to have had the chance to read it * Washington Post * Possession is eloquent about the intense pleasures of reading. And, with sumptuous artistry, it provides a feast of them * Sunday Times * Our best novelist * Evening Standard * As always, Byatt wields beautiful prose, and the mix of prose and poetry gives the book a sensuality as mysterious as anything in the plot * Elizabeth Kostova * Intelligent, ingenious and humane * Times Literary Supplement * Intelligent, literary, and ambitious...combines the drive of the thriller with the 19th-century novel, and throughout she threads the poetry and passion of ''romance''....races to a riotous final scene of storms and graveyards * The Times * Proves that a serious, intricate book can also be a page turner...manifest intelligence, subtle humor and extraordinary texturing of the past within the present make Possession original and unforgettable * Time * Shimmers with something close to genius ... If I become famous enough to be the castaway on Desert Island Discs, this is the book I'd choose. It requires effort but, trust me, it is a modern masterpiece * Daily Mail *