[ARC gifted via NetGalley in exchange for a fair review]

A charming and skilful retelling of the Grail Quest in lovely poetic form; recalls medieval Arthurian narratives, Tennyson, Coleridge, and Tolkien without being derivative, and brings a bit of extra flair to the original narratives / Malory's Morte, via an increased interest in the ecocritical and natural world with the original episode of Galahad & the Naiad, and an extended focus on the Oak, Ash, and Thorn. It also provides an increased role for Percival's sister, who doesn't even get a name in Malory's Morte (Guite pulls the name Dindrane from a separate source I think?) but here has her own miniature quest in an episode that recalls the Rime of the Ancient Mariner very powerfully. Some combining of various characters/plotlines/elements from various sources in places, but given that it seems they do serve to simplify the narrative and create one coherent story it seems reasonable. I do think it's fitting for modern Christians to explore the Galahad and Grail narratives, being that they are so inextricable from their medieval religious basis and unlike other Arthurian stories it's pretty much impossible to secularise them, something that various modern retellings often have trouble with, (but not Guite!). Very beautifully written and engaging, a massively impressive poetic feat you see less and less these days. I felt in places it was a tiny bit clunky in the pacing, but on the whole pretty well balanced considering just how much stuff happens on the grail quest and how skimmy medieval poets could be. I don't imagine people who want from their Arthuriana the sword-swinging mighty battles will find what they're looking for here, but this is impressively true to the experience of reading the original sources... without, you know, being in Middle English. Or Old French. Or anything else.

Some formatting issues in my kindle preview with the anti-distribution warning appearing to obscure some lines and others not having the correct formatting or line breaks yet, but I could generally get through that without too much trouble, and of course that will be fixed in the final edition. I enjoyed both Clarke's foreword and Guite's afterwords, and thought they had a lot of really good thoughts on how Arthuriana may (and may not) fit into a modern Britain, and Stephen Crotts's woodcut style illustrations were lovely.

I've often been disappointed that I was never assigned to read this at a level or at uni; having now read this I suspect my tutors chose 'season of migration to the north' by tayeb salih over this when creating the postcolonial module we did, possibly just because 'season of migration...' is lesser known, although we did read some of achebe's theoretical work and his debate with thiong'o on using english vs using indigenous african languages in writing and literature.

still, things fall apart is unambiguously foundational and I'm glad I finally got around to it. considered, powerful; the last few lines in particular are wildly frustrating and nauseating. from a quick scroll in the goodreads reviews (I know...) it's clear that people consider okonkwo, quick to anger, uncompromising, and violent, as not exactly a 'likable' protagonist... but I think pursuing likeability as a line of thought when talking about this novel is pretty pointless. okonkwo is an focalizer through which achebe can illustrate the impacts of the colonial invasion and the insidious colonial missionary work, and through which he can show a culture being destroyed to such an extent that it becomes unrecognisable and its former great men cannot function within it any longer. he's also a refusal to marginalise or trivialise african perspectives, as so many other novels and writers at the time (especially/mostly english-language writers) did. I do regret a bit that I'm not studying it though, I think I'll have to put a bit more thought into it, especially into the episode where the priestess briefly absconds with ezinma. it interested me but I wasn't sure exactly what to make of it. I also think it's subtler than it gets credit for; saw complaints about the simplicity of the prose, but I find them to be a bit ridiculous.

I wanted to find the Anne Carson translation of this but failing that (they're soooo hard to find in the UK!) I fell on the first one I found second hand. (Velacott REALLY likes the phrase 'ride roughshod'). Agamemnon is probably my favourite of the three (the play. not the guy...), it's real classic ancient tragedy lol complete with everything nasty and all the fabulous speeches. I also can't say I don't sympathise with Clytemnestra because I do (and I also think it wasn't fair that they didn't bring up WHY she did what she did in the trial, although they also pointed out that she was absolved by her death...) and I refuse to hate on her lol. Aeschylus is not imo as interested as Euripides in what makes the Wicked Women tick, which is a shame, and I think on the whole I prefer Euripides when we're handling the Medeas and the Clytemnestras and so on (this is not something that Aristophanes agrees with me about apparently lmao but never mind) but there's lots of interesting grappling here with what is Just and what is Fair (which in the minds of the Athenians seemed to skew to misogynistic but that's par for the course eh) and it was interesting to see the 'young' and 'old' gods butting heads— not something that really has the same presence in older literature. Also hugely reflective of the reciprocal nature of the god-human relationship especially with the bit with Athena talking over the Furies at the end. I do think this works so well as a trilogy though (which is perhaps why it is the only extant one) and I would really like to see a production of it.