A Whistling Woman (2002)

Booker winner A.S. Byatt (''Possession'') ends the quartet on English life she began in 1979's ''The Virgin in the Garden'' with A Whistling Woman, a bold, brainy eulogy to the late '60s. Heroine Frederica Potter -- now a single mother in her 30s -- lands a job hosting ''Through the Looking-Glass,'' a groovily postmodern talk show. Frederica's fractured home, work, and love life reflect Byatt's primary concern, the splintering of self and society. But the story proves fragmented too, as myriad subplots -- including one about hippies who create an ''anti-university'' and another about a cult headed by a dangerous schizophrenic -- barely come together for the fiery finale. The plethora of characters sometimes drowns out the ''whistling woman'' (presumably free-spirited Frederica), but Byatt's clashes between the intimate and the intellectual make for a raucous, lively work.