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A review by yak_attak
Ragnarök: The End of the Gods by A.S. Byatt
2.0
Not really sure I get the point here. Byatt rephrases Norse myth of the end of the world through two main guises - first, sparsely as seen from her own perspective as a child growing up in world war II. It's an interesting thread but one that doesn't seem to amount to much? The comparison between the end of the world and the war seem obvious and fascinating, but she almost tries to avoid that as much as possible, instead casting 'the thin child' as nothing more than an intercession between us and the main text.
The second is that of nature, and this is much stronger - the world of the myth is very natural, wild, brimming with life, and Ragnarok is its destruction in its variety and beauty. But here we get into the large issue I have with the book... it's just written so blandly straight? Like it's only a few edits off from a long-form Wikipedia article. A *well written* Wikipedia article mind you, her choice of words and phrasing is excellent in places, but the story takes the form of an endless repetition of facts, nothing more, reducing the myth down to all the shit you already knew anyways.
Seems like this was the wrong choice for my first experience with her work.
The second is that of nature, and this is much stronger - the world of the myth is very natural, wild, brimming with life, and Ragnarok is its destruction in its variety and beauty. But here we get into the large issue I have with the book... it's just written so blandly straight? Like it's only a few edits off from a long-form Wikipedia article. A *well written* Wikipedia article mind you, her choice of words and phrasing is excellent in places, but the story takes the form of an endless repetition of facts, nothing more, reducing the myth down to all the shit you already knew anyways.
Seems like this was the wrong choice for my first experience with her work.