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3.46 AVERAGE
3.46 AVERAGE
The list-making of creatures can get a little dull, rather than being inspiring as the author probably intended. The parts of the story I like best are the ones most liked by the author herself, so there is an inherent bias in the story-telling toward Loki and his offspring, but it is still enjoyable.
The "Thoughts on Myth" at the end of the book was particularly pleasurable, as it affirmed many of my own thoughts while sending me to other sources to continue learning.
The "Thoughts on Myth" at the end of the book was particularly pleasurable, as it affirmed many of my own thoughts while sending me to other sources to continue learning.
Byatt is an author I have been aware of but never picked up, but then I foud this book at work and it was perfect for this challenge so I grabbed it. I have to say that I very much enjoyed her prose, although there were a few places where I found it a little too repetitive, and I will say that the writing was probably my favourite part of the book and I do feel that if it had been any longer I wouldn’t have enjoyed this book as much as it would have become too much.
This retelling does fall a little flat, perhaps because I have been blessed with some amazing retellings lately in other books. Still, this was a very relatable retelling, and it was easy enough to see myself as the child taking refuge in a story of another world and time (albeit not during war time) and I think that is why this book had such an impact. I wouldn’t call this a mind-blowing read, but it was one that caught my attention and all in all was a solid read (and short!)
This retelling does fall a little flat, perhaps because I have been blessed with some amazing retellings lately in other books. Still, this was a very relatable retelling, and it was easy enough to see myself as the child taking refuge in a story of another world and time (albeit not during war time) and I think that is why this book had such an impact. I wouldn’t call this a mind-blowing read, but it was one that caught my attention and all in all was a solid read (and short!)
This was the best. You should all read it. ALL OF YOU. Y'know, if you like good writing.
This little book is a beautiful little sweep straight through the center of the most prominent Nordic myths, as interpreted by Byatt's child-self. The analogies to WWII England and the Nazis and climate change and the determination of a child to give up naïveté and innocence are there, but subtle. It's a book whose levels can be picked apart and appreciated separately, and to which I feel a strong connection. I didn't live through a wartime evacuation, but I did live through a difficult childhood by burying myself within the heavy pages of books and myths. I can relate.
I really enjoyed this re-imagining of the gods of Asgard and Ragnarok. I was torn between blazing through it, the book is very short, and slowly reading a little each day or every couple fo days. It really took me back to hours spent reading all kinds of books, but particularly Greek & Norse mythology after school in the library at the "resurrected" McWillie Elementary School in Jackson, MS. I also have come to the conclusion the author outlines in the afterword: "I didn't 'believe in' the Norse gods, and indeed used my sense of their world to come to the conclusion that the Christian story was another myth, the same kind of story about the nature of things, but less interesting and less exciting." Thank you, A. S. Byatt, I've never been able to articulate my conclusion with such clarity and brevity.
Still just a pretty straight retelling of Norse myth, but much better written and far my preference over a similar effort by Gaiman.
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Strong character development:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Part of the Canongate myth series, this is A.S.Byatts take on Norse mythology and in particular Ragnarok, the end of the gods and the world.
It’s both a retelling of some of the myths and also the story of a little girl during wartime who is given a copy of Asgard and the Gods which she reads deeply and often. (Along with Pilgrims Progress!). This is from Byatt’s own childhood.
I loved this, I love her writing and it was easy to get into. She doesn’t give the gods human personalities, they are what they are and it’s hard not to enjoy Norse myths. Who doesn’t like frost giants and fire giants, giant snakes that encircle the earth and wolves and other monsters, the Norns spinning the threads of fate and Yggdrasil, the world tree?
It’s both a retelling of some of the myths and also the story of a little girl during wartime who is given a copy of Asgard and the Gods which she reads deeply and often. (Along with Pilgrims Progress!). This is from Byatt’s own childhood.
I loved this, I love her writing and it was easy to get into. She doesn’t give the gods human personalities, they are what they are and it’s hard not to enjoy Norse myths. Who doesn’t like frost giants and fire giants, giant snakes that encircle the earth and wolves and other monsters, the Norns spinning the threads of fate and Yggdrasil, the world tree?
I picked it up believing this was going to be Byatt's take on Ragnarok but the blurb had nothing to do with what was within the pages. Basically, this is more a textbook than anything else. And yes, I do love Norse mythology but it wasn't even written in an engaging manner. All in all, a dull and unsubstantial book.
For the first 58 pages of this book, I had a difficult time staying awake. It was the lists that got me. And the comma splices, which made even independent clauses seem list-y.
As other reviewers have mentioned, especially during those "creation-of-the-world" sections early on, the lists could easily run the length of a page. And if you're not familiar with a comma splice, it's the term that was written multiple times in red on nearly every undergraduate English paper I turned in. I got my B.A. in English; comma splices were the bane of my existence. I can recognize them now and they haunt me in other people's writing, a legacy passed to me by my professors.
In Byatt's Ragnarok, the shift came when the giant snake Jormundgandr arrived on the scene. The lists seemed to be shorter and come less frequently. The comma splices continued but commas were occasionally exchanged for semi-colons or, oddly, colons, which offered some variety. But mostly, the descriptions of Jormundgandr really caught my imagination. Finally, I could see what the thin child saw in the old Norse myths. I no longer struggled to stay awake.
Ragnarok the myth is both vivid and bleak. It's not a story of hope. It's a story of beings acting out a chain of events that has always been on the page. Even when one makes an effort to change fate, it's clear that it is just that: fate. It ends in The End. It cannot be changed.
There's the bleak.
The vivid is in the descriptions of the gods and monsters, both their appearance and their emotions: these are big creatures both physically and emotionally. Of Jormungandr, Byatt writes:
It's description like this that I read and say, "Ah! There's the language people rave about when they talk about Byatt's work!" I have a clear image of what Jormungandr looks like (even if I can't pronounce her name), and thanks to the lush descriptions, I have the same for most of the other gods and monsters. The only tale with which I was familiar was the one about Baldur's death, and even that Byatt told in such a way that I saw the scene and the intricacies of the characters more clearly than I had reading other versions of the story.
Byatt tells the myths alongside the story of "the thin child," a character who represents Byatt's own wartime childhood in the English countryside. The thin child is drawn to the old Norse stories in large part because they echo her life both in the vividness and the bleakness. The thin child is in the middle of this time of both great freedom (from her asthma which is better out of the pollution of London, from the social roles of peacetime, the "dailiness," as she calls it) and great fear (of the possibility that her father won't return, of the "enemy" whose bombs rumble even this far outside the city). She deals with this by expecting that her father, off fighting the war, will not return. She accepts this, as the gods in the myth accept that the end of the world is inevitable. I think she finds a kinship and a comfort in this hopelessness.
And then the myth ends and the war ends and, it seems to me, the thin child is left to herself. Perhaps it's her age and would have happened anyway, but Byatt links this feeling of malaise and confusion with the end of the war and her family's return to their London home, and Ragnarok and the end of the world and the end of the myth. The world didn't end, and that seems to inspire a feeling akin to disappointment in the thin child.
The "black thing" to which Byatt refers here is the image at the end of the myth and the end of everything, but the "black thing" is also the fear and the feeling of inevitability that her father will not return. She carries the black of both with her even past her need for them, and every future experience is shadowed by it.
So, as you can see, while I felt the book had a slow start, I stayed awake long enough and it caught me eventually. I'm not going to go all gaga over A.S. Byatt, but I can certainly see what all the fuss is about.
As other reviewers have mentioned, especially during those "creation-of-the-world" sections early on, the lists could easily run the length of a page. And if you're not familiar with a comma splice, it's the term that was written multiple times in red on nearly every undergraduate English paper I turned in. I got my B.A. in English; comma splices were the bane of my existence. I can recognize them now and they haunt me in other people's writing, a legacy passed to me by my professors.
In Byatt's Ragnarok, the shift came when the giant snake Jormundgandr arrived on the scene. The lists seemed to be shorter and come less frequently. The comma splices continued but commas were occasionally exchanged for semi-colons or, oddly, colons, which offered some variety. But mostly, the descriptions of Jormundgandr really caught my imagination. Finally, I could see what the thin child saw in the old Norse myths. I no longer struggled to stay awake.
Ragnarok the myth is both vivid and bleak. It's not a story of hope. It's a story of beings acting out a chain of events that has always been on the page. Even when one makes an effort to change fate, it's clear that it is just that: fate. It ends in The End. It cannot be changed.
There's the bleak.
The vivid is in the descriptions of the gods and monsters, both their appearance and their emotions: these are big creatures both physically and emotionally. Of Jormungandr, Byatt writes:
"The flung snake fell through the firmament in shifting shapes. With her spine locked she was a javelin, swift and smooth, her mane of flesh-fronds streaming back from her sharp skull, her fangs glinting...She was a sensuous beast: the rush of air pleased her: she snuffed up the scent of pine forests, heathland, hot desert, the salt of the sea."
It's description like this that I read and say, "Ah! There's the language people rave about when they talk about Byatt's work!" I have a clear image of what Jormungandr looks like (even if I can't pronounce her name), and thanks to the lush descriptions, I have the same for most of the other gods and monsters. The only tale with which I was familiar was the one about Baldur's death, and even that Byatt told in such a way that I saw the scene and the intricacies of the characters more clearly than I had reading other versions of the story.
Byatt tells the myths alongside the story of "the thin child," a character who represents Byatt's own wartime childhood in the English countryside. The thin child is drawn to the old Norse stories in large part because they echo her life both in the vividness and the bleakness. The thin child is in the middle of this time of both great freedom (from her asthma which is better out of the pollution of London, from the social roles of peacetime, the "dailiness," as she calls it) and great fear (of the possibility that her father won't return, of the "enemy" whose bombs rumble even this far outside the city). She deals with this by expecting that her father, off fighting the war, will not return. She accepts this, as the gods in the myth accept that the end of the world is inevitable. I think she finds a kinship and a comfort in this hopelessness.
"Imagining the end of things, when you are a child, is perhaps impossible. The thin child, despite the was that was raging, was more afraid of eternal boredom, of doing nothing that really mattered, of day after day going nowhere, than she was of death or the end of things."
And then the myth ends and the war ends and, it seems to me, the thin child is left to herself. Perhaps it's her age and would have happened anyway, but Byatt links this feeling of malaise and confusion with the end of the war and her family's return to their London home, and Ragnarok and the end of the world and the end of the myth. The world didn't end, and that seems to inspire a feeling akin to disappointment in the thin child.
"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. The black thing was now in the thin child's head and was part of the way she took in every new thing she encountered."
The "black thing" to which Byatt refers here is the image at the end of the myth and the end of everything, but the "black thing" is also the fear and the feeling of inevitability that her father will not return. She carries the black of both with her even past her need for them, and every future experience is shadowed by it.
So, as you can see, while I felt the book had a slow start, I stayed awake long enough and it caught me eventually. I'm not going to go all gaga over A.S. Byatt, but I can certainly see what all the fuss is about.