The Children's Book

Gathorne-Hardy’s terrifying book on public schools, which helped, as can be seen.

Dominic Gregory went to look at inns near Dungeness and sent me a pebble with a hole in it.

My American publishers at Knopf have been, and continue to be, encouraging, meticulous and generous. I am grateful for Sonny Mehta’s enthusiasm. I immensely enjoy working with Robin Desser, my editor at Knopf—I am very happy that we have now worked together for a considerable time. Steven Barclay, my American lecture agent, is both a good friend and extraordinarily competent and imperturbable.

My publisher at Chatto and Windus, Alison Samuel, and my editor, Jenny Uglow, to whom this novel is dedicated, have been supportive and imaginative. Patrick Hargadon discussed knotty narrative points beyond the call of duty. My agent in the States, Melanie Jackson, has been both wise about the novel, and precise about practical matters. My British agent Deborah Rogers has looked after me, in more ways than I could have imagined, and I owe a great deal to her and to her assistants, Hannah West-land and Mohsen Shah. Lindsey Andrews was diligent and helpful when she worked as my assistant. And I am as always very grateful for Gill Marsden’s patient and faultless typing, and for her calm interest in the work.

Finally, I was amazed by Stephen Parker’s beautiful cover design, and Gabriele Wilson’s elegant American adaptation of it. They are exactly right and all I could have wished for.

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A. S. Byatt is internationally acclaimed as a novelist, short story writer and critic. Her novels include Possession, awarded the Booker Prize in 1990; the quartet The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, Babel Tower and A Whistling Woman; The Game; and The Biographer’s Tale. She has also written two novellas, published together as Angels and Insects, and five collections of shorter works, including The Matisse Stories and Little Black Book of Stories, as well as several works of nonfiction. Educated at Cambridge, she was a senior Lecturer in English and American literature at University College, London. She lives in London.

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright © 2009 by A. S. Byatt

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by

Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered

trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Originally published in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus,

the Random House Group, Ltd., London, in 2009.

The poem “Trench Names” originally appeared in The New Yorker.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Byatt, A. S. (Antonia Susan), [date]

The children’s book : a novel / by A. S. Byatt.—1st ed.

p. cm.

eISBN: 978-0-307-27295-9

1. Women authors—Fiction. 2. Children and adults—Fiction.

3. Runaway children—Fiction. 4. Country homes—England— Fiction.

5. Family secrets—Fiction. 6. World War, 1914–1918—England— Fiction.

I. Title.

PR6052.Y2C48 2009

823’914—dc22

2009016334

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and

incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination

or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual

persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely

coincidental.

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