Scan barcode
A review by gwendle_vs_literature
The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Headley
4.25
I have interacted with the Beowulf story in the original Old English, four or five modern English translations, two other text re-tellings, three film versions, and one Star Trek: Voyager episode — this is my favourite re-telling, and rivals my tied favourite translations (Seamus Heaney’s and the one by the author of this novel).
Casting Grendel’s Mother as a veteran with PTSD and associated memory loss is a stroke of genius that resolves the questionable translation discrepancies when the same words (albeit in different gendered forms) are used to describe both her and Beowulf. Headley even maintains some of the alliterative rhythms in her prose interpretation of the poem, and keeps the story moving at a slightly more modern pace so that it doesn’t drag the same way that the original can.
I highly recommend this book (with the caveat that it is definitely a re-imagining, and not a direct analogue for the original story — for that, go to Headley’s translation).
Casting Grendel’s Mother as a veteran with PTSD and associated memory loss is a stroke of genius that resolves the questionable translation discrepancies when the same words (albeit in different gendered forms) are used to describe both her and Beowulf. Headley even maintains some of the alliterative rhythms in her prose interpretation of the poem, and keeps the story moving at a slightly more modern pace so that it doesn’t drag the same way that the original can.
I highly recommend this book (with the caveat that it is definitely a re-imagining, and not a direct analogue for the original story — for that, go to Headley’s translation).