Ragnarok – A.S. Byatt

For me one of the most attractive things about the Ragnarok myth is that it is the end of the gods rather than the end of the world so it’s rather galling that this is generally dismissed as a later Christian nod towards resurrection. I see it as a perfectly brilliant way of being able to have your mythical cake and eat it; by assuming Ragnarok has happened you can move onto new beliefs whilst still leaving room in your imagination for an older world view which on a wild winters night - or the disconcerting white nights of a northern summer - or during the cataclysmic reality of a world war may not seem so very far away from possibility. I mention this because A.S Byatt also dismisses the idea of renewal and I thought I might hold it against her, but she does it in such a way that I can't. She really is very, very, good.

I’ve been anticipating this book for what has probably been the best part of a year now, I even read ‘The Penguin Book of Norse Myths’ in preparation (and very good it was too). A.S. Byatt is without doubt my favourite living writer particularly when she’s writing short stories and novellas. It might have been a question as to whether this book could ever live up to my hopes for it – honestly it far exceeded them.

It’s a good myth to start with, though I think this is the point to say that I’m a bit vague about the difference between myths and fairy tales. I think I can tell the difference when I’m reading one but an actual definition remains elusive, not least because I feel that there are elements in many myths which are basically fairy stories but put them all together and they become more than the sum of their parts. Most deities are fairly one dimensional but the Norse men had Loki, a shape shifting Lord of Misrule, a god of chaos and curiosity, both Odin’s foster brother and the agent of Ragnarok. In short a complicated character.

What Byatt does with Ragnarok is tell it through the experience of a thin child in wartime. The child takes what she needs from her reading which is not necessarily belief but something more like recognition. Meanwhile Byatt uses (and I liked this too) the traditional structure of the cycle to add in her own lists of things that the child does believe in – nature and the weather, although we know what the child doesn’t, that these common things are no longer common, the destruction continues.

As all good story tellers should Byatt also adds her own distinct twist to events. The chapter on Jörmungandr the world serpent is my favourite and will bear several rereading (as will the whole book).   Jörmungandr in this telling is cast into the sea as a small creature who eats then devours and all the time grows until she spans the earth. All the time she becomes ever more monstrous and angry until the day when she’ll join her father and brother for the final battle.

Like all the best books finishing this has left me feeling slightly bereft, intent on reading again soon, and desperately curious to follow up with more reading around the subject. The hard back is pricy, the kindle version more reasonable, I’m glad I got a proof copy and didn’t have to wait for the paperback because I think this may be the best book I’ve read all year – there is stiff competition for this title, none of them have been duffs. Honestly this book is worth picking up. 

Baba Yaga Laid an Egg – Dubravka Ugresic

Part of the Canongate myth series, this book ticked so many boxes for me and yet for some reason I’m struggling to pin it down. Still I’m going to try because I found it both a great read and deeply invigorating – I came out of it fizzing with ideas. The box ticking comes from the myth element, myths, legends, fairytales, folklore – it all fascinates me, and Baba Yaga is a particularly intriguing figure. (Just in case she’s new to you Baba Yaga is a hag who lives in a hut that stands on chicken legs by the edge of the forest. Sometimes she helps travellers but more often she entraps them, especially girls. She travels by flying through the air in a mortar steered by a pestle wiping out her traces with a broom. She may or may not eat children).

All of that is well within my comfort zone, but reading an author I know nothing about, whose (indrawn breath) contemporary – well it’s not something I do a lot of, although there are a few more in the Canongate series that I’m adding to my wish list (how amazon must love me). I might even take a chance on another of Ugresic’s books because this one reminded me irresistibly of Angela Carter and I’d like to know if that’s specific to this book because of its explicit basis in myth, or if it’s a shared quality between the two writers. It’s the way that Ugresic plays with reality that reminds me of Carter; things seem real enough and then they become fantastic, strange, worrying, and not quite real at all.

I should also say that this is the second book in a row (after Memento Mori) that’s dealt with the extremes of old age and it occurs to me that the very end of life when neither body or mind works quite as it used to, or quite as you might like it to then things might well be strange, worrying and not quite real.

‘Baba Yaga Laid an Egg’ is split into three parts; the first section chronicles the relationship between the author and her aging mother and includes a trip to her mother’s old home in Bulgaria with a young academic called Aba. Part two takes place in a spa; a triumvirate of old women turn up and wreak a certain amount of havoc on all around them, all in their way are waiting for death:

“Beba sat in the bath wrapped in lacey foam. She could not remember the last time anyone had treated her with greater warmth or tenderness than this hotel bath. This was the kind of painful realisation that drives the more sensitive to put a bullet in their temple, or at least to look around to see where they might attach an adequately strong noose.”

This is the point when strange things really start to happen. Finally there is a ‘Baba Yaga for beginners’ section written by Dr Aba Bagay. It’s an exhausting exploration of Baba Yaga (and incidentally introduced me to the work of Marina Warner who’s now also on my wish list) written as if to the editor of the book. Exhausting but ultimately very worthwhile.

I mean to carry on researching Baba Yaga – here I think she is an avenging fury of sorts - and a neat opposite of the ideal of womanhood, but for all the repulsiveness in her image she’s still a recognisable woman, an angry one at that, and somehow I find that very compelling.