The Biographer’s Tale

"We are held together by threads of dependence," writes A. S. Byatt's protagonist, Phineas G. Nanson, in her new novel The Biographer's Tale. This idea, as it applies to the characters' interlaced lives, underscores both the structure and narrative trajectory of Byatt's spiraling plot. Phineas, a postgraduate student in England, becomes disillusioned with academic abstractions,…