collected
About 3 h 45 min · at 30 minutes a day, about 8 days
Estimated from the page count of this edition. Dense books can take longer than the estimate.
Outside King Hrothgar’s hall, Hart, the monster Grendel watches people wage wars, celebrate heroes and listen to the blind poet he calls the Shaper. Living in a cave with his mother, he longs for contact with the humans who fear him. The Shaper’s songs promise a meaningful order that Grendel wants to believe in, though the cruelty he witnesses contradicts their version of human greatness.
His first-person voice is lonely, argumentative and darkly funny, slipping into modern slang amid warriors and monsters. Philosophical debates about meaning, art and violence frequently interrupt the action; the novel is literary fantasy as interested in disputing heroic stories as retelling one. Its humor accompanies grisly killing.
Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).
Highly regarded
Yes, the dense, experimental prose and circular, nonlinear structure demand attention. Philosophical debates about meaning, art and violence frequently interrupt the action, so following Grendel’s arguments matters as much as following events.
Grendel sounds lonely, argumentative and darkly funny, sometimes slipping into modern slang among warriors and monsters. His longing for human contact sits alongside a dark humor that accompanies grisly killing.
Strong violence includes grisly killing, with humor accompanying the brutality. There is also strong sexual content and abuse, alongside Grendel’s observations of human cruelty and war.
Not really, the emphasis falls on character, ideas and voice, with philosophical arguments frequently interrupting the action. Warriors and monsters provide the setting for literary fantasy that questions heroic stories and the meaning art gives to violence.
Grendel wants to believe in the meaningful order promised by the Shaper’s songs, but the human cruelty he witnesses contradicts their account of greatness. That tension connects questions about art, truth and morality with his isolation.
192 pages in the Vintage 1989 paperback edition.
Vintage · 1989 · Paperback. ISBN 9780679723110.
About 3 hours 45 minutes at 50 pages an hour, based on the 192-page Vintage edition. Dense books can take longer.
John Gardner was an American novelist, essayist, literary critic, and university professor whose work joined philosophical argument to conspicuous acts of storytelling. In Grendel, dense, darkly comic first-person narration moves the Beowulf monster from the edge of the legend to its troubled center, where he watches human beings turn violence and accident into sustaining myths. Gardner also built stories within stories. October Light interrupts a bitter family feud in rural Vermont with the deliberately trashy novel one character reads. His concern with fiction’s moral purpose became explicit in the controversial On Moral Fiction, while The Art of Fiction and On Becoming a Novelist addressed the practical work of writing.
Luigi Pirandello
Literary Fiction · Literary fiction · Experimental fiction
