This small book is a retelling of the Armageddon of the
Norse myths, Ragnarok, as framed by the mind of the ‘thin child’. This thin
child- pretty obviously Byatt herself- has been evacuated with her mother and
sister from London to the English
countryside. She picks up a book of Norse myth, and finds herself swept up in
it, finding it the perfect reading for how she feels about her own life- she
does not expect to see her father come back from the war alive, she is aware
that her parents feel as helpless as she does, she finds the Norse gods more
fitting than the Christianity that is taught each Sunday. She finds an odd
solace in the idea that the end is written already, no matter what the gods do
to prevent it.
Byatt, curious as most children are (or used to be),
presents Loki in a more favorable light than most tellers do. He is the curious
one; he wants to know what lives in all the dark corners of the earth and sea.
Thor and the other gods are not curious or noble; they seek to torture and
destroy Loki’s children simply because they exist. They write their own future
destruction.
Inserted into this telling is an ecological warning; that
the abundance of plants and creatures that thrived in the English countryside
of Byatt’s youth is disappearing. Humans, like the Norse gods, are writing
their own doom.
When I picked this book up, I thought it very different from
the author’s other works. I didn’t realize it was written for a series of myths
retold by famous authors; that explains my feeling that the book was not up to
Byatt’s usual many-layered, ornamented style. As a novel, it’s not great; as a
myth telling, it is.
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