There will be huge review coverage for this new novel from A.S.Byatt, a marvellous, gripping, panoramic novel of family secrets. At the centre of the novel is Olive Wellwood, a famous writer who writes a separate book for each of her children. As the children of the title grow up, they discover secrets kept from them by the older generation and they face an uncertain future of social and economic change. The Children's Book is set against a backdrop of late Victorian and Edwardian world and takes us from eastern England to Paris and Munich and the trenches of the Somme. Born at the end of the Victorian era, growing up in the golden summers of Edwardian times, a whole generation were heading to the darkness ahead; in their innocence, they were betrayed unintentionally by the adults who loved them. In a profound sense, this novel is indeed the children's book.
