Babbeltower -just babble?

Do review of babbeltower by a.s. byatt -submitted to review stream.com
I love books, especially obscure ones. Several years ago I was looking through a book bargain bin and I saw this title “Babbeltower” by A.S. Byatt. I had no clue who A.S. Byatt was or if she knew how to write a good book but the conclusion I came to after reading the book was that she definitely does.
Many books start out very slow but this book did not: a women is abused mentally -her husband wants to control her and seclude her from friends and work- and physically -the instance where she leaves him is after she has healed from the wound she got from being hit by an axe by her husband. I was very happy she -unlike many other women of abuse- does not let herself be consumed by the abuse but escapes. She takes her small son with her, the husband -and his family- want him back and so the pursuit begins.
To find work in her new life she becomes a book editor; she reads a book called ‘Babbeltower’ which is very interesting because the name is fitting to both the actual book I read and the book within the book.
In the book within a book the characters are searching for many things and doing many things -including lewdly sexual acts and torture- but everything comes down to control: the characters are trying to build for themselves a utopia where no one rules but in fact everyone is ruled by one single leader and everything is about control.
The actual book with the woman, Fredrica, is exactly the same: she is trying to control her uncertain, yet interestingly new, life and for the first time since her marriage she has a small bit of control. She is also fighting the custody battle, another form of fighting for control.
The book within a book and the book itself at first don’t seem to have a lot to do with each other but soon the very obvious theme of control in both books becomes apparent and there is something else: the fantastical lives of the characters of the book within the book are so “crazy” that the custody battle, axe throwing and lewd sex in the actual book -because there’s lewd sex there as well as the utopian-characters story- seem like everyday happenings.
Fredrica in the main book is looking for a “normal” life with her child and throughout the book comes closer and closer to it while the book within the book gets farther and farther away from the goal of having utopia -aka a “normal”, pleasant life; the contrast between the two in that respect is very interesting. Therefore it is easy to say that every contrast and similarity in both books is very interesting and the mixture of the two -not to mention that it was exciting and kept me on the edge of my seat- drew me in. An intellectual, scintillating, thriller book! A must read!