Byatt's chapter titles refer to many earlier literary works: "Women in Love," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "Much Ado," and "Comus" are all chapter titles, referring respectively to works by D. H. Lawrence, John Keats, William Shakespeare, and John Milton.

The reference to Lawrence is a particularly important one to the novel, and the characters themselves allude to his novels. The Potter sisters have some similarity to the sisters of Women in Love (1920), but Byatt's fictional world is more complex than Lawrence's. The characters express some contempt for Lawrence's view of relationships, which they see as too simple and dishonest.

One of the difficulties of this novel is the many literary allusions. Byatt once said in an interview that she had a problem with knowing whether her readers would be likely to have read the works she alludes to in her novels.

Of all her works...