Grendel
1971
- fantasy fiction
- beowulf
- monsters
- adaptations
- fiction
- epic poetry, english (old)
- heroes
- dragons
- medieval civilization
- civilization, anglo-saxon
The story
The first and most terrifying monster in English literature, from the great early epic Beowulf, tells his own side of the story in this frequently banned book. This classic and much lauded retelling of Beowulf follows the monster Grendel as he learns about humans and fights the war at the center of the Anglo Saxon classic epic. This is the book William Gass called "one of the finest of our contemporary fictions."
What it’s like
Cold, mossy northern dark and the sour smell of mead halls, rendered in a voice that swings between lyrical rapture and sardonic, bitter wit. John Gardner's prose is dense and muscular, full of sudden sensory detail: frost on the fens, firelight smearing across smoky timber, the rank sweetness of rot and dead things, the clatter of a feast heard from outside in the wet dark. The narrator is a lonely, philosophizing creature who broods in his cave, so the mood is mostly interior, with long reflective stretches punctuated by bursts of hunger and rage. Sound is a constant hum of wind, water and distant song, and the book's rhythm is slow and circling, rising into violence and then sinking back into thought. Intensity is real: the killings are described in close, visceral detail, with blood, gore and a few brutal scenes of war and cruelty, though sex is mostly absent or oblique. This is a dark, bleak, existential read with flashes of dry humour, suited to a cold, quiet evening alone rather than a light background read. It is for readers who enjoy myth reframed through an outsider's eyes, philosophical unease, and ornate, bruising sentences.
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