jerald 's review for:

Ragnarok by A.S. Byatt
5.0

A.S. Byatt's Ragnarok is a lurid retelling of the death of the Norse gods in which intricately woven depictions of nature take center stage. Poetic and insightful, it will remind you not a little of Rachel Carson's nature writing, with a matching insightful prescience.

Byatt makes it clear that any good myth makes no attempt at allegory, but it's hard not to see our own current situation — of environmental degradation, short-sightedness, greed, and ambivalence — in that of the gods' downfall in Ragnarok (which the author addresses in the afterward).