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3.46 AVERAGE
3.46 AVERAGE
DNF - This was not for me. I loved Posession but couldn't get into Byatt's fairly straight retelling of Norse myths. I wanted more of the story of the thin girl instead.
"This is how myths work. They are things, creatures, stories, inhabiting the mind. They cannot be explained and do not explain; they are neither creeds nor allegories...Myths are often unsatisfactory, even tormenting. They puzzle and haunt the mind that encounters them. They shape different parts of the world inside our heads, and they shape them not as pleasures, but as encounters with the inapprehensible. The numinous."
Thoroughly enjoyable, but after encountering Byatt's creativity, research and poetry in works like Possession and The Children's Book, I just wanted more than this little tale had to offer. It was just too short! I would have loved to see what she would have produced had she written independently from the Canongate Myth Series, though now that I'm familiar with the project, I'll be reading more of their contemporary myths as well!
Thoroughly enjoyable, but after encountering Byatt's creativity, research and poetry in works like Possession and The Children's Book, I just wanted more than this little tale had to offer. It was just too short! I would have loved to see what she would have produced had she written independently from the Canongate Myth Series, though now that I'm familiar with the project, I'll be reading more of their contemporary myths as well!
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The beauty of language lavished on this small book is luxurious. Some stories here will be familiar to students of mythology, but Byatt manages to make them feel fresh, creating an ethereal world brimming with deities and beasties, somehow just beyond the bounds of our own. Her frame-narrative approach also gives us fresh eyes through which to experience these age-old stories. An absolutely elegant addition to the many narratives of this epic.
After discovering the Cannongate Myths series I was excited to see Byatt was one of the authors taking part so eagerly anticipated her contribution. Being a fan of the series, myth and Byatt my expectation were high and they were well meet.
The crux of the narrative is the relating of a number of Nordic myths by a girl in wartime England from one of her favoured books all in the lead up to the retelling of Ragnarok. I was looking forward to a re-interuptation of the myth but Byatt instead offers a reasonably straigh retelling of the selected Nordic myths. Though not was I was expecting (or wanting) I dodn't find that this detracted from my enjoyment of the work. Though Byatt was working with material I was familair with I found the treatment of them through the eyes of the 'thin girl' enchanting and compelling. Through Byatt's 'thin Child' I was able to discover the Nordic myths as if for the first time once more.
The crux of the narrative is the relating of a number of Nordic myths by a girl in wartime England from one of her favoured books all in the lead up to the retelling of Ragnarok. I was looking forward to a re-interuptation of the myth but Byatt instead offers a reasonably straigh retelling of the selected Nordic myths. Though not was I was expecting (or wanting) I dodn't find that this detracted from my enjoyment of the work. Though Byatt was working with material I was familair with I found the treatment of them through the eyes of the 'thin girl' enchanting and compelling. Through Byatt's 'thin Child' I was able to discover the Nordic myths as if for the first time once more.
adventurous
challenging
dark
informative
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The Norse myths in this very short book are as fragmentary and unexpected as any mythology, but the story of the child reading the myths tied them together and provides a narrative framework that makes the impersonal myths human. The detailed descriptions of the natural world, and the strangeness of the stories seen through the mind of a child makes this book compelling and hauntingly authentic.
reflective
medium-paced
I really enjoyed this, though I did feel as if the historical framework of the thin child, and how she used Norse myth to cope with living through WW2 and the absence of her father to be, well, thin. Extraordinarily so. It doesn't give a great deal of weight to the rest of it, and I'm of two minds as to whether it needs to be there at all. The myth itself is well told, but what really stands out for me, and what's bumping this up to four stars rather than three, is the naturalist setting. The thin child wanders through the English countryside, and it's flowers and plants all the way. The world serpent slithers along the ocean bed and it's corals and otters and crown-of-thorns starfish... every other page, it seems, is a welter of organism and detail. This isn't using historical events to write about myth, this is using myth to write about nature, and that nature writing was what appealed the most.
medium-paced