Halloween Bingo 2022
It's becoming traditional for me to read a King Arthur retelling during Halloween Bingo. This brand new book appeared in my library holds just while I was organizing my reading list for that event and I had to find a way to shoehorn it in. My first exposure to Griffith's writing was her absolutely lovely novel Hild. I've been patiently (that's a lie BTW) waiting for the sequel, but I was willing to accept this as the next best thing.
This is a feminized, queered version of the legend of Sir Percival. Griffith's main character, Peretur, is a young woman, fathered by a member of the Tuatha de Dannan, mothered by a mortal woman with powers of her own, who resents being glamoured into happiness by the Tuatha. Griffith is a thorough researcher and she incorporates many of the legendary details of Percival's life into this character. Not that she slavishly follows the legend: she feels free to give us a new perspective on Percival, Merlyn, Nimue, and King Arthur's relationship with Excalibur.
In her notes, Griffith tells of her relationship with the legend: ”I first read Le Morte d'Arthur as a nine-year-old and fell headlong into the legend. Beneath its High Medieval trappings, I could smell the hidden iceberg of ancientness, practically taste the moors with menhirs looming from the mist…Even then I think I sensed that there was no true tale of Arthur and Camelot: the legend is and always has been mythic fanfic…” I found Arthur slightly later in life, a ripe old thirteen, through Vera Chapman's King Arthur's Daughter. I persist in preferring Chapman’s and Mary Stewart's versions over those that are more focused on details of war and battle. It's that “iceberg of ancientness" that grabbed me too and the romance of that holds me to this day. (My mother once remarked that I was more interested in prehistory than in historically documented societies, and in that she was right on the money.) Griffith takes an already attractive garment and embroiders it with fine colours and textures.
I used my Wind in the Willows wild card to convert the Fear the Drowning Deep square to A Grimm Tale to accommodate this book. As a retelling of a legend it fits nicely. Wind in the Willows requires a buddy read and I was pleasantly surprised when four other readers joined me. Two out of five of us loved it. The others commented on purple prose, so your mileage may vary. For me, this was more about the journey than the destination. It's like this with hikers too: some are focused on how far they can get and how fast. I am much more likely to linger, identifying flowers, observing bird behaviour, enjoying the spray from waterfalls. The world needs both kinds of people.
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