The book is composed of two novellas: "Morpho Eugenia," about natural selection, insects, blindness both willful and otherwise, and love in various guises; and "The Conjugial Angel," about spiritualism, seances, Alfred Tennyson, and love--of the dead, of the flesh, and of the sort that dare not speak its name. "Morpho Eugenia" is considerably more successful than "The Conjugial Angel," but both novellas are excellently dark and creepy, and rich with meaningful historical detail--the sort of thing that Byatt does best. My appreciation for both of these stories was enriched by reading with alongside Byatt's essay "True Stories and the Facts in Fiction."