Ragnarok: The End of the Gods (Myths)
*Starred Review* Booker Prize winner Byatt, a writer of exceptionally deep thinking and mischievous humor, who often incisively contrasts the great web of the wild with the tangles of human yearning and invention, presents a commanding retelling of her favorite myth, Ragnarok, the Norse “myth to end all myths.” Byatt reinvigorates this gripping vision of the end of the world and all its creatures through the eyes of her young self, a “thin child” evacuated to the countryside during the German Blitz. A thoughtful child who “devoured stories with rapacious greed,” she becomes utterly engrossed and stringently comforted by Ragnarok. Following the myth’s arc of disaster, Byatt first brings its lush, singing world to rhapsodic, scientifically precise life in a grand litany of living things as entwined as the fine threads in a vast, breathing tapestry. Then we meet the flawed, reckless gods: Odin, Thor, Frigg and her beloved son Baldur, and shapeshifter Loki, chaos incarnate, whose pranks turn the gleaming, fecund splendor of life into a wasteland of bone, ash, and darkness. In her bracing closing essay, Byatt shares her fear that we are unconsciously emulating the “irresponsible and wayward and mocking” Norse gods and truly bringing about the end of nature and ourselves. A gorgeous, brilliant, and significant performance. --Donna Seaman