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Jan 13, 2012

karen rated it:

this review may or may not contain spoilers. i assume that most bookish people are familiar with the basic plot elements of beowulf, either through high school required reading or that video-game-looking movie, or cocktails at the heaney's. if not - this could ruin everything! but it won't. ah, existentialism... when i was a young lass with my fontanelle as yet unfused; when i still liked the doors and books about manson, i dabbled briefly and emotionally in existentialism. "l'enfer c'est l More...

124 comments like (71 people liked it)

Jul 29, 2011

Stephen rated it:

If I could ADOPT that big, lug of a monster, I would be signing the papers right now because Grendel really, really needs a friend something awful. That lonely, melancholy maneater gave my soul a migraine and his final "haunting" words spent me like loose change from the sofa. I can't tell you (though I'm still gonna try) how much I loved this book. It is definitely being added to my list of ALL TIME FAVORITES.

I have rarely fallen so completely into a narrative More...

17 comments like (42 people liked it)

Jun 30, 2011

Michael rated it:

Every once in a while a book comes along that is so beautifully written it shames me to think I should ever consider putting verse to paper. This is one such book.
-m

1 comment like (9 people liked it)

Dec 26, 2007

Evan rated it:

When I picked this up, I expected a standard villain's point-of-view story wherein the villain is portrayed as a victim for comic effect. But Gardner, much to his credit, avoids this. Instead, Gardner makes Grendel fully aware of his monstrosity and cruelty and examines the ways he justifies his own existence and actions as a logical, thinking being. The book becomes almost like the monster's story in Frankenstein but set against a background of heroes and legends. And it is all rendered in More...

0 comments like (10 people liked it)

Dec 11, 2007

Rebecca rated it:

I feel a little ambivalent about this book. It was definitely intellectually appealing, and the conversation that Grendel had with the dragon was very well done. But Grendel didn't really do what I expect novels to do: it didn't make me care about anything. Part of that may be because it's only a meager 174 pages - probably technically a novella - but I think even in 174 pages Gardner could have engaged the reader more.

While I was able to scrape away a few enjoyable bits from this More...

4 comments like (8 people liked it)

Nov 07, 2007

Dracostellarum rated it:

I'm not sure of what to think of this book. The style shifts a lot, and clearly Gardner put a lot of work and thought both to its narrative construction and to the themes he was covering in the book. That being said, I was more aware of how the book was written rather than why. The words and the construction of the narrative got very much in the way; I was too aware of them. It seemed very skeletal, not a whole lot of flesh or life to it. There is a lot of philosophy, and its introduction seems More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Apr 08, 2008

Lars rated it:

Marvelous. Everyone but me, it seemed, who was around in the early 70's, read "Grendel." I don't think I really even knew what Beowulf was all about back then, so wasn't interested. So now I'm glad to come to "Grendel" after many connections to the source. I work with someone who is getting her masters in English Lit, and she complained about reading Beowulf papers as a T.A. that were all about how Grendel felt. She was at first confused about the reason for this--not ha More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 09, 2008

Terry rated it:

(my thanks to Rich for the Christmas gift)

It's sort of weird that I've never read this book before. Having grown up with an English teacher for a father, I've known the story of Beowulf ever since I watched an 8mm film project one of his students made, the chief special effect of which involved flushing a yearbook photo of the boy who played Beowulf down the toilet in order to simulate the hero's diving into the haunted mere. I've known about John Gardner's retelling of the story fro More...

4 comments like (4 people liked it)

May 26, 2008

Ben rated it:

"My advice to you, my violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on it."

This is one of those books that you can pretty much devour -- I am tempted to say, like a tasty thane, drunkenly asleep on a warm summer's night.

Strange to say, I liked the middle of the book the best. (When does that ever happen?) That is the point where the pathos reached its pitch and where, interestingly enough, the book is least laced into the structure set by Beowulf.

Grend More...

6 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 24, 2011

Mara rated it:

Who's the monster? No, who's the monster? My own version of the Glass Bead Game this gets shelved next to "The Monster at the End of this Book." But, I still loved it. The language delights. The story's a classic. Just, when I think the philosophizing has gotten heavy-handed -- well. Yeah. Dragons do it, priests do it, even advisors to power hungry nephews do it.

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 15, 2008

Julie rated it:

I've just started this book because the students in my classes are reading this for pleasure, so I imagine it's wonderful. I'm a big Beowulf fan as it is, and I'm intrigued by the premise of such a book as well as by the fact that teenagers are asking to read it! So far I'm on page 11 and I have read, and reread, and underlined, and tossed the words around in my mind and on the tip of my tongue....sprawled out on the grass at the park in the warm May sun. I LOVE IT!!! I think this is the best pr More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Mar 26, 2009

Adam rated it:

Gardner writes in The Art of Fiction, that once the mechanism of an analytical plot is figured out, much of the magic becomes the illusory wielding of gimmicks from behind the curtain. Grendel warrants some reconsideration, the writing enough (figurative and just plain good prose), carries pleasure beyond the staging of ponderings into civics and humanity, light footed into the full bodied character of Grendel. Beside a solid plotting, this Anglo-Saxon tale retold from his other half, gates the More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 22, 2009

Antof9 rated it:

This is one of the strangest books I have ever read. And I've read a lot of books. Perhaps it seems strange to me because I never read Beowulf in any class, nor had I read this before now; I don't know. But it's really, really weird.

My book club read this last year (or the year before), and I was out of town during that time, so although I had the book, I'd never read it. The whole time I was reading it, I wondered if I had the right book. For a time I thought maybe I was readin More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 05, 2010

Matt rated it:

The monster has a name (Grendel) and a mother (no name given). Grendel, who has an artist's soul, is corrupted by the dragon (his name is Lucifer, it's kind of implied). This is the story, then, of one of Cain's outcast progeny, a monster, a demon, Grendel, the monster with a name.

Grendel comes to no good end (Beowulf rips off his arm and he bleeds to death). The really interesting story is how he comes to end up there, which is Professor Gardner's real imaginative triumph. Unferth the More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 18, 2008

Spuddie rated it:

I actually "read" the downloadable audio version. Narrated by the incomparable George Guidell, this is the Beowulf story told from the point of view of Grendel, the monster. While it is, indeed, ‘just a story,’ it’s also a commentary on the basic nature of humankind, about the darkness (and the light) that resides within each of us. I listened to this on the heels of reading The Book Thief, so it was a very contemplative week at my house. ::grin::

Guidell does a stellar job More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 20, 2008

Sean rated it:

Wonderful. Grendel is a tormented monster. This we know. But why is Grendel tormented?

As I read, his anguish began to seem familiar, and - horror of horrors - I began to identify with him.

Eliot's plea in "Ash Wednesday" - one of my favorite poems - applies:

"Will the veiled sister between the slender
yew trees pray for those who offend her
are terrified and cannot surrender"

Grendel is tormented by his own nature More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 17, 2009

Kyle rated it:

Grendel is easily the best book I read in 2008. It’s my favorite book. I must have read it seven times between October and now. It is the perfect collage of nihilistic, existential, and alien ideas. I wound up loving the furry little guy, it’s that good. Must read.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 05, 2009

Devon rated it:

I have really been looking forward to Grendel for a long time. I've heard really good things about it and I felt more sympathetic toward Grendel than Beowulf while reading/watching Beowulf. So it was with some disappointment that I actually read Grendel and found it wasn't as great as I wanted it to be. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it...it just wasn't amazing. According to my mother (I read it on the way to and from the flea mall today...hehe...) I frowned the entire time I was reading it. I do More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 25, 2009

Tim rated it:

Well, it had promise - i think it fulfilled some of it. What an idea of telling a very old tale - I understand it is one of the first english tales? - from the viewpoint of the monster Grendel.

"A" for enthusiasm and imagination, rather grim and dark of course, and yet when you've completed it, all you have immersed yourself in is a possible view of the inside motivations of a mythical monster...

Okay, there was some rather interesting stretches of philosophy - a More...

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Jan 27, 2012

Carlos rated it:

Grendel es un libro que sabía que me impresionaría antes de leerlo. En él, Gardner toma la voz de Grendel, el monstruo al que combate Beowulf, en un largo monólogo interior donde explica sus motivaciones y su lejanía de los humanos. El acierto de Gardner es que lo que lo separa y lo hace monstruoso es precisamente que es más humano que monstruo, y que por ello no odia a humanos y a monstruosni .
Grendel es Beowulf desde la perspectiva del antagonista. Donde Beowulf es un héroe, prototípoco, More...

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Dec 23, 2011

Gladys rated it:

My favorite bits are those in which Grendel describes his fraught relationship with the "Shaper," the harpist and poet who entrances and moves him to tears even while he sings of Grendel's accursed origins and inherently evil nature. To make matters worse, the Shaper glorifies men, whom Grendel knows from his constant vigil on the margins of the meadhall to be no less murderous than himself. This hypocrisy fills him with rage even while the sheer beauty of the poet's song inveigles him More...

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Dec 16, 2011

Vince rated it:

I first encountered this excellent novel in Professor George Tuma's "Fantasy Literature" class when I was an undergraduate ... probably around 1976 or 1977. If I had to name a lifetime "Top 10" list of books John Gardner's Grendel would definitely be on it.

I later read this book again in a graduate 20th-century lit class taught by Professor Eric Solomon. For a final paper in that class, I wrote a three-chapter parody of the book. Eric knew John Gardner personally More...

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Nov 13, 2011

Bob rated it:

Beowulf has been an on-again, off-again read for me since high school. Seamus Heaney’s translation of the tale placed me thoroughly in the first row for Beowulf, and so when I came across Gardner’s telling of Grendel’s story, I had to read it.

Such literary twists are rarely what you expected, and that’s the case with my reading of Grendel. In Gardner’s telling, the monster is brutal in an almost matter-of-fact way; he enjoys the hunt, the kill. It’s just the way of his nature. But the More...

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Aug 18, 2011

Ceridwen rated it:

What I want is for Elizabeth to read this, because she should get over the ram in the opening pages and just float in the language within. I've had two wonderful conversations about this book in the last few whatever days, one with Karen, who indirectly made me read this, and one with Elizabeth, who can't get over the ram.

So, I'm drunk, so this might not make a lot of sense.

Karen talked a lot about existentialism in her review, which is a wonderful take on this book. I More...

9 comments like (24 people liked it)

May 15, 2011

Bob rated it:

The "high concept" as you probably know is Beowulf retold from the point of view of the monster, who is not initially monstrous until the behavior of human beings quickly prompts him to react in kind. The book is to some extent a critique of how religion, myth and the ideal of heroism glorify and impose order on the random and chaotic brutality of the world; Grendel himself cannot help tears as he listens to the bard known as The Shaper retell and transform the events in which he has p More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 23, 2011

Mariel rated it:

This is one of those times that I really love goodreads. Some months back (probably more like two. My days blend together) I was looking through books randomly in a bookstore. I thought that Grendel by John Gardner looked interesting and made a mental note to look it up when I got home. I forgot before then because my brain powers are going, going, gone. As luck would have it, MFSO was "currently reading" it. Yay goodreads! karen's review made me had to read it. I love her review. You More...

5 comments like (6 people liked it)

Nov 20, 2010

Austin rated it:

A brilliant, savage satire of existentialism and postmodernism. Gardner wrote against his times and hated other famous writers publicly (see for yourself: http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/...), and one ought to admire him for his iconoclasm. He was an uncommon man with real balls. To understand Grendel it's necessary to know of Gardner's disdain for what he called the "winking, mugging despair" of a writer like Thomas Pynchon. What a thing--to reimagine the monster Grendel, More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Nov 02, 2010

Matthew rated it:

This book maybe the single most influential in inspiring me to try to become a writer, mainly because of what Gardner was able to do with the Grendel character. He transformed the savage monster of the Beowulf legend to a lonely creature on an existential quest to find meaning for his miserable existence. His writing reminds me of Hemingway's, meaning every word is deliberately chosen and not much excess. His writing so perfectly mimmicks the emotions he is creating for Grendel. When he is confu More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Oct 11, 2010

Adam rated it:

Grendel, by John Gardner, is a book about a half man, half beast, named Grendel, who roams the woods during the Anglo-Saxon days in old England. He lives in an underwater cave that is cold, dark, and barren. In the cave, his mother dwells at all times, for she has no apparent interest in the outside world. Grendel is able to understand what most people are saying, because his language is similar to the early English language. His mother on the other hand, has never learned any language due to he More...

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Sep 20, 2010

Sophie rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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