Babel Tower (novels that have genuine artistic value but may produc a "corrupting effect").

A.S. Byatt is known best for her Booker Prize-winning novel Possession. Recently, she provided us with her latest novel, Babel Tower, the third work in a planned quintet of novels set in various decades around the middle of our anxious century.

In Babel Tower, we follow the severe personal and legal challenges besetting Frederica, an intelligent, independent-minded woman emerging from a shattered marriage. She moves from her country home to London's brilliant lights as the exciting sixties take off. Our normally astute heroine has, for some obscure reason(possibly after overdosing on E.M.Forster's Howard's End), married a priggish country squire named, wouldn't you know it, Nigel. He turns out to be the vengeful sort who hopes to counter her divorce suit by every means at his considerable disposal.

Frederica confronts the difficulties of moving to a new city with her young son and with little financial …