At present great importance is attached to the teaching of foreign languages. No doubt, it happens not without purpose

Although the sisters take centre stage Byatt also deserves credit for her minor characters: Thor (Juliet’s daughter), Simon, Deborah (Juliet’s daughter) and Ivan (Juliet’s lover) are all quite well fleshed out. Cassandra doesn’t have anyone she’s particularly close to and so her main interactions are with family and Simon. 

To the book’s detriment Byatt does hog the soapbox a bit and you do wonder at times whether you’re reading a novel or an essay. Cassandra you expect to be wordy but she’s not the only one who sometimes says a bit more about a subject than, in reality, they probably would’ve known to say. There are also too many descriptions of clothes for my tastes. Can never see the point in them although to be fair even I would’ve made some effort at describing Cassandra’s dress sense (or lack of it). I see that a lot of reviewers have marked this novel down because they’ve read her later novels first—notably Possession—but fortunately I’ve only read Ragnarok: The End of the Gods and the only thing that’s significant about that book is the Byatt omits her sister from the narrative completely.