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It's only a 170 pages, but it's no quick in between read; it's still a Byatt. It has the typical Byatt language and descriptions which I love. I warn you, if you have been annoyed and bored by Byatt before, don't start this one. It is full of erudite word mastery.
This is a true re-telling of the myth as explained in the last part 'Thoughts on Myths'. Myths often have characters that are not everyday humans, but icons of specific human traits like jealousy, beauty or strength. Where most contemporary authors dealing with myth would try to humanise the gods and give them a realistic human psychology, Byatt leaves the icons intact. Her gods and creatures are super strong, shape-shifting and magic. It requires a generous amount of suspension of disbelieve. Providing these characters (characters? maybe actors would be a better word) with a psychology would probably make them even more strange than believable.
Byatt doesn't just give us the Ragnarök myth, she also shares her own introduction to them. She describes how her mother gave her (the thin child) Asgard and the Gods in the war years. The images of the end of the world fitted with her experience of the blacked-out, auster war years. But still, today, these tales of how the gods brought about the destruction of their world and did nothing to change the course of events, they knew Ragnarök was coming, ring awfully true in a world where oceans turn into plastic soups.
If you're thinking of reading this I want to encourage you by giving you my favourite part as a teaser. In the harsh cold world there is this little incident between Loki and his snake-daughter that is so sweet, I had no idea that a snake could have this effect on me.
'Well met, daughter. I see you grow, you prosper.'
She coiled herself around his naked ankles. She asked why he was there. He said he had come to see how she did. And to study the wild waves. Whether there was a form in their formlessness. They came in, one after another, in a regular swell. But the water in them was wild, the eddies streamed every which way. Was there an order in the foam? The snake said that it played like needles on her skin, and that that was a delight. The demigod squatted down beside her and made a line of wet pebbles and translucent rainbow shells. he said that he had a project to map the shoreline. Not in great regular half-moons as gods and men might draw this bay, to make a haven for dragon-ships. But small, stone by stone, rivulet by rivulet, promontory by promontory, even as small as these fingers, even as fine as a fingernail. A map for sand-fleas and sand-eels, for everything hangs together, and the world may be destroyed by too much attention, or too little care, towards a sand-eel, for example. 'Therefore', said Loki the mocker, to the snake his daughter, 'we need to know everything, or at least as much as we can. The gods have secret runes to help in the hunt, or give victory in battle. They hammer, they slash. They do not study. I study. I know.' He kicked aside his brief barrier, into the platelets of water. He listened with his fingertips, scraped away sand, tugged out a bristling lugworm, black and jerking, which he offered to his daughter, who sucked it in.
This is a true re-telling of the myth as explained in the last part 'Thoughts on Myths'. Myths often have characters that are not everyday humans, but icons of specific human traits like jealousy, beauty or strength. Where most contemporary authors dealing with myth would try to humanise the gods and give them a realistic human psychology, Byatt leaves the icons intact. Her gods and creatures are super strong, shape-shifting and magic. It requires a generous amount of suspension of disbelieve. Providing these characters (characters? maybe actors would be a better word) with a psychology would probably make them even more strange than believable.
Byatt doesn't just give us the Ragnarök myth, she also shares her own introduction to them. She describes how her mother gave her (the thin child) Asgard and the Gods in the war years. The images of the end of the world fitted with her experience of the blacked-out, auster war years. But still, today, these tales of how the gods brought about the destruction of their world and did nothing to change the course of events, they knew Ragnarök was coming, ring awfully true in a world where oceans turn into plastic soups.
If you're thinking of reading this I want to encourage you by giving you my favourite part as a teaser. In the harsh cold world there is this little incident between Loki and his snake-daughter that is so sweet, I had no idea that a snake could have this effect on me.
Spoiler
Then he turned, and peered at her from under his brim, and she saw that this was Loki the dissembler, Loki the quick-witted, Loki her father whose form was hard to remember, even for her, since it changed subtly not only from day to day but from moment to moment. He raised his hat, and his bright curls sprang out. He grinned.'Well met, daughter. I see you grow, you prosper.'
She coiled herself around his naked ankles. She asked why he was there. He said he had come to see how she did. And to study the wild waves. Whether there was a form in their formlessness. They came in, one after another, in a regular swell. But the water in them was wild, the eddies streamed every which way. Was there an order in the foam? The snake said that it played like needles on her skin, and that that was a delight. The demigod squatted down beside her and made a line of wet pebbles and translucent rainbow shells. he said that he had a project to map the shoreline. Not in great regular half-moons as gods and men might draw this bay, to make a haven for dragon-ships. But small, stone by stone, rivulet by rivulet, promontory by promontory, even as small as these fingers, even as fine as a fingernail. A map for sand-fleas and sand-eels, for everything hangs together, and the world may be destroyed by too much attention, or too little care, towards a sand-eel, for example. 'Therefore', said Loki the mocker, to the snake his daughter, 'we need to know everything, or at least as much as we can. The gods have secret runes to help in the hunt, or give victory in battle. They hammer, they slash. They do not study. I study. I know.' He kicked aside his brief barrier, into the platelets of water. He listened with his fingertips, scraped away sand, tugged out a bristling lugworm, black and jerking, which he offered to his daughter, who sucked it in.