The Children's Book, by A S Byatt

I'm not sure I'll find a book to top this one for quite some time.

This is, put simply, my favourite book in recent memory - and not just because the cover is sumptuously beautiful!

Byatt's Possession is one of my favourite books of all time, but my attempts at reading her other works have been dismal. So with trepidation, I started on her latest offering The Children's Book. Needn't have feared as, though it was complex and difficult at times, the book was so well-thought out, so meticulously researched and perfectly plotted, that I felt the twin urges of speeding through it to find out what happens to the characters, and poring over every word and detail as the writing was so stunning.

Set in Edwardian England, the book is a masterful tapestry of the domestic and the epic - somehow managing to convey both the tiniest details of fin de siecle life and the meta forces that swirl around our flock of characters. And what sets The Children's Book apart from most other books I've read in recent years, what puts it in a different stratosphere, is Byatt's ability to galvanise all her analysis, her historical research, her wonderful use of well-known figures of the time into something altogether new. The power of her descriptive writing made me feel like I was right there at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, or in the dark shadows of a German puppet theatre. Of particular delight was her exploration of different fairy tales, how Grimm's Cinderella was the misshapen-twin-in-the-attic to Disney's technicolour offering to the world.

This book has something for everyone. It is also quite possibly, the BEST value-for-money read out there. And I cringe to think we spent the equivalent buying Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Angel's Game, which as David put it, is Dan Brown in Barcelona.

So. Read it, read it, read it. Certainly some of the best few afternoons and evenings spent in my life :)