‘A bad winter. I couldn’t lay a hand on them, prevented as if by a charm. I huddled in my cave, grinding my teeth, beating my forehead with my fists and cursing nature. Sometimes I went up to the frozen cliff wall and looked down, down, at where the lights lay blue, like the threads running out from a star, patterning the snow.’
This is not the familiar dark of fantasy, the distant threat of an old evil revived against factions of light that must gather against it. This is earth and ooze and the dimness of sodden caves, the musk of a beast bewildered by a world it discovers on the other side of a dark pool filled with fire-snakes. The Gollancz 2015 edition of John Gardner’s ‘Grendel’ (first published in 1971) has the words ‘Fantasy Masterworks’ across the cover, back page and spine and though this will be common to every book in the series, here it seems to be a half-nervous reassurance that the ‘fantasy’ label has been correctly applied. It is fantasy, though it is also poetry, mythology, philosophy and social commentary.
At the most simplistic, it is the tale of Beowulf, told from the perspective of the beast, Grendel. I cannot recall reading Beowulf, though it is on my shelf somewhere. The story is known to me so perhaps I have, or have soaked it up from its many re-tellings in other books and films. In any case, it does not seem to matter as ‘Grendel’ could stand alone without its origin story.
Mead-halls, axe fights, battles and feasting, harpers who spin their influence, young girls given as brides and a king with a bear on a chain. The trappings of a fantasy work are all laid out, though they are as watercolours against the thick oils of Grendel’s awakening. There is even a dragon, lying on a hoard of gold, though its frail, old voice and obscure, or perhaps just academic, philosophy will be unlike any other dragon.
There are far more sophisticated analyses of the work so no such foolhardy attempt will be made here. If approached lightly, perhaps hoping for a good, familiar bit of fantasy, then ‘Grendel’ will trap you, your foot caught in the crack between two old tree-trunks. It will charge you bull-like with its visceral violence. It can also kiss your forehead with its quiet wisdom. Be warned.
