Or, stab me with this book and I come back for more.
I have a capsule review about Spear, by Nicola Griffith, somewhere on the site, but recently had the opportunity to listen to Griffith’s narration of the book herself, and it was glorious enough I decided to break it out into its own post.
Spear is a re-telling of part of the Matter of Britain (King Arthur and the attendant stories), specifically the bit about Percival and the Holy Grail. But she casts it in starkly different terms, steeped in the druidic, mystic origins of Britain, and Percival becomes “the girl,” eventually Peretur, as pure (and holy) a creature of the world as they ever are in all the other stories. She comes to the world of men from a different perspective, and watching her learn, struggle, and eventually stay true, makes a wonderful story.
I first read the book two years ago, just after it was published, and immediately bought and lauded it. Then a few months ago I went back and listened to it, and it changed my perception of the story even more. Griffith reads it like a poem (her writing already has some of the poetic to it), deliberately picking cadences that give the story a more grounded but mythical quality. It really was pretty extraordinary.
It helps, for my purposes, that Peretur is attracted to women, and eventually falls in love with a woman (one of some note in the mythology, but no spoilers here). I think the book is such that without that I still would have loved it, but there is no question that had Peretur been, in fact, the man Percival, there would be no story here.
So I’m kind of head over heels for this book, and Griffith’s narration, and then I go exploring and come to the author’s website. And on that site is what she calls her writer’s manifesto and by all that is holy and good, I am lost. I reproduce it in its entirety below (find it on her site here), because I do not ever want to lose it.
When I write, dear reader, I don’t want to build a careful tale for you to discuss with a smile in a sunny place, I want to own you. I don’t want to be the Hot New Streaming Series, I want to be pornography: to thrill you so hard you’re ashamed but can’t help yourself crawling back for more.
I want to write a whole novel that invades you. I want to control what you think and feel, to put you right there, right then, killing and being killed, fucking and being fucked, cooking and starving, drinking and thinking, barely surviving and absolutely thriving. I want to give you a life you’ve never had and change the one you live.
How? I will take control of your mirror neurons. I will give you tastes and textures, torments and terrain you might never find in your real life. I will take you, sweep you off your feet, own you. For a while. For a while when you’re lost in my book you will be somewhere else, somewhen else, someone else.
I control the horizontal, I control the vertical. Sit back, relax, enjoy. When you’re done, take a breath, smoke a cigarette, figure out who you are now, and come back for more.
- Nicola Griffith
Holy fuck.
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