Babel Tower is a technically complicated novel. Byatt writes in the present tense, which is common for the contemporary writer, although this is the first work in which she has used it; she also adopts an omniscient voice and the use of multiple points of view. The sum effect of this is to complicate the narrative, to weave in past and future happenings with what is going on, to show how Alexander's life intersects with Frederica's and how they are separate, to present a picture of the world that is very realistic: jumbled, multilayered, and filled with ordinary events that have great meaning to those who experience them. Sometimes Byatt shifts point of view into a minor character who does not appear frequently at all simply to make space for that character's thoughts on a complicated scientific issue; she also uses it to trace out the tangles of...