As I said, the main quality of Byatt's poetry imho is the way she manages to make it seem like credible creations of a given fictional character - by no means an easy feat. I agree that the poetry isn't necessarily that good, though, and these were less inspired than Ash's and LaMotte's work in Possession. And they took the wind out of the story even more than the fairy tales.

I've never had a very visual memory, and I generally find it difficult to imagine extensive written descriptions visually. So while I do in a way enjoy reading her descriptions, I really could use the pictures to let me see what those things actually look like. And in some cases I don't even know what the words mean if the descriptions go into too much detail - I only had a vague notion of "shingle", for instance, which she kept using when describing that beach.

I love Ash and (especially) LaMotte in Possession, but the present-day storyline and characterization isn't that spectacular, agreed. Much better here, even if I kept confusing some of the boys (I blame Byatt for picking names as similar as Gerald and Geraint, especially when she then starts using "Gerry" as a nickname).

Yeah, it's a good ending. The war passages are impressive in general, even if the Robins aren't fleshed out and so I didn't really care about their fate (though their mothers' meeting was poignant, which I guess was the point anyway).