The Children’s Book, the latest novel by Booker Prize winner A.S. Byatt, is a masterful examination of a child’s initiation into adulthood: the insecurity, the predators, loss of innocence and the uncovering of secrets and lies woven by the adults close to them.

Spanning the austere England of the 1890s to the giddy Edwardian years of the early 1900s, the novel maps the lives of Olive and Humphrey Wellwood, their seven children and the young cousins and friends in their privileged circle. Olive is a celebrated children’s book writer and the family exist in a golden bohemia where children are given choice and freedom in a world where men’s paths are fixed and women have few rights.

The Children’s Book is meticulously researched and Byatt brings to life a remarkable array of characters, as well as the political and social climate of England and Europe at the time – a region seething with change and unrest. This novel is involved and works on many levels; it’s not one to pick up for a casual read, but it is highly rewarding.