A S Byatt’s passion for language and literature is borne out in all of her novels.

Her best-known work, the Booker prize winner Possession, is a sort of literary detective story in which modern scholars delve into the love lives of two Victorian poets. The poets were Byatt’s invention as were the reams of 19th Century style poetry layered throughout the novel. The technique of creating new worlds of literature within a novel has become something of a trademark for Antonia Byatt.

But in A Whistling Woman she eschews the practice proffering instead only a slice of her fiction within fiction. A teaser.

A Whistling Woman, her eighth novel, gives more than a nod to literature but also takes in a broader range of ideas and issues.

Indeed Byatt’s novel portrays an era when literature and the notion of exploring images through words and language are under threat from the new audacious medium of television. In the same way more traditional forms of tertiary education are being challenged and rejected by mutinous students. The preference is for more experimental and less structured models of learning.

The fourth in a quartet, A Whistling Woman depicts a time of disorder where faith and learning, families and relationships are questioned and threatened.

The finale to a series of novels about Frederica Potter, A Whistling Woman also stands alone as an accomplished piece of literature. Potter is central to the narrative but she is one of many characters within this literary labyrinth. And while the characters are well established knowledge of the three earlier books is not essential to an appreciation of this one.

Set in 1968, the plot zigzags between the personal and the conceptual. As Frederica leaves her academic career to host a new TV show, an anti-university establishes itself near the grounds of Northern English university. As scientists research the way snails form memories a therapeutic community develops into a bizarre cult with connections to Manicheanism.

One of the key characters in the novel is the psychiatric patient Josh Lamb. An imposing figure with white hair, his name (his father’s name is Joseph) and appearance allude to the person of Jesus. But it is merely an illusion. Lamb has rejected Christianity for the teachings of the Gnostic Mani.

After surviving an horrific childhood, Lamb becomes convinced that evil is at least as strong as good. He even suspects God as capable of evil. Lamb’s perception of God hangs on the account of Abraham and Isaac. He recoils from the story and asks time and again “Why should a good God tempt his chosen servant to murder?”

Lamb is a troubled but charismatic figure. He draws people to him. But is he simply a madman, scarred by events of his youth or is he something akin to a sage or a prophet?

Byatt enjoys playing with her reader’s perceptions and assumptions. We hear of an astonishing act of violence being undertaken as an answer to a prophecy. It appears to be a random deed by a deranged man. But years later the “prophecy” is fulfilled. A coincidence or the hand of God?

The story of Abraham’s almost-sacrifice is both terrible and astonishing. But it is most remarkable in its relationship to the genesis of Christian faith – the sacrifice of Jesus. Abraham’s hand was stayed. His son was spared. Perhaps their relationship was forever altered – we do not the shape of their daily lives. But there was a deliverance, Abraham did not have to bear the stain of his son’s blood. Not so God. God gave his son up, willingly. And the trial of Abraham gives voice to God’s torment at such a sacrifice.

Erudite and academic, Byatt’s novel demonstrates her intellect and extraordinary breadth of knowledge. While the extent of her intelligence stretches beyond the reach of this reader, the pull of the characters was sufficient to sustain interest in the novel. Fortunately A Whistling Woman operates and can be enjoyed on several levels. Byatt’s novel is a dense and complex text but subsequent readings promise to yield more insights into the scholarly world she has created.

A Whistling Woman is a substantial work of literature that warrants deeper analysis than this brief review. A veritable congestion of ideas and characters, the novel draws all the narrative strands together in a dramatic conflagration.

With allusions to the Bible, Alice in Wonderland and with layers of scholarly in-jokes, A Whistling Woman is an intricate and cerebral exercise. Nevertheless it is an engrossing and absorbing read – particularly when Byatt is dealing with matters of the human heart.