Shannon
Hillsborough
A review of this — 33 weeks ago
Grendel is a retelling of Beowulf from the monster’s point of view. The monster is an outsider who spies on men from trees and cliffs, able to understand them and even speak a rudimentary form of their language, so he knows he is related to them. But when he tries to join them, he is attacked and driven away. He finds the cave of an ancient dragon, and they have a conversation. Because the dragon can see all time at once, rather than linearly, he shows Grendel his bleak fate, as well as mankind’s ultimate end, which he says no one can change or prevent. Caught in an existential malaise following this conversation, Grendel goes on a years-long killing spree and delights in humiliating his victims. Yet he seems almost relieved when an unnamed hero arrives from the sea with the sole aim of hunting Grendel down.
Although short, Grendel was a tough novel to get into. As a solitary character, the story takes place mainly in Grendel’s head, and sometimes his philosophical meanderings are hard to follow. But after Grendel talks to the dragon, I became fascinated. The discussion about time, fate and free will touches on themes I’ve been reading and thinking about a lot lately (such as Slaughterhouse-Five, Watchmen, The Children’s Hospital and even Lost). I could identify with Grendel’s inner turmoil, and I wanted to know how — or if — he would resolve it.
John Gardner is almost a mythical writer for me. I read and loved his dark but funny fairy tales as a children, such as Dragon, Dragon: “Dragon, dragon, how do you do? I’ve come from the king to murder you.” Gardner died young in a motorcycle accident, and now these books are very hard to find. Because of my childhood love for Gardner’s writings, I felt that his most famous novel, Grendel, deserved a very careful read, and I think it paid off.
You will probably most enjoy Grendel if you are already familiar with Beowulf. If you like books that expound on classic works of literature and present a different point of view, or books with challenging philosophical themes, then you shouldn’t overlook this gem.
