"Ragnarok" by A.S. Byatt

Author A.S. Byatt presents her novella-length treatment of Norse mythology in a light-touch narrative showing how it captures a young girl’s imagination in wartime England and has apparently stayed with her for the rest of her life. Byatt appends a short general treatment of her views on mythology, and a couple of illustrations for good measure. I’m no one to trust on this matter, but the main mythological plot and dramatis personae themselves seem exhaustive. It is certainly enough to turn my head, and to force me to reread certain sections to try to make sure I’d kept all the dozens of characters — be they gods, monsters, magic plants, or angry wolves — straight and accounted for. 

Overall it’s a highly diverting treatment, and it benefits from the author’s scheme for presenting it as the young girl experiences it. Byatt departs from other retellings of other myths by modern authors, too: she chooses not to novelize her characters in the sense that she does not give them recognizable doubts, personalities, or psychologies. They are vain, vindictive, murderous, ambitious, or dishonest, but never self-doubting. As the author says in her afterword, “No, the wolf swallowed the king of the gods, the snake poisoned Thor, everything was burned in a red light and drowned in blackness.”

So for me, the most interesting aspect of Ragnarok was its effect on the young English girl who loves the myths so much. Compared to it, in the child’s mind Christian teaching pales to watery weakness. At the end, there is a very spare narrative of the thin little girl’s family — her handsome, intrepid father surprises her by returning from the war to a warm welcome, but post-war her mother fades into depression: the long-awaited return to the cottage from which they’d been evacuated “took the life out of the thin child’s mother,” as she sank into the quotidian routine. For the mother,  “Dailiness defeated her.”

Ragnarok contains the vivid flights of a young girl’s fancy within a poignant — and pointed — framework. It’s learned, aesthetically refined, and in its way, comprehensive. I found it well worth the (less than onerous) effort. Take and enjoy!