Hound | |||||
George Green | |||||
Bantam, 411 pages | |||||
A review by William Thompson
George Green's novel is to be applauded for its essential faithfulness to the original text, both in terms of its presentation of characters
and events, as well as the spirit in which it is narrated. Told from the perspective of Cuchullain's charioteer, a Roman galley slave
washed up on the shores of Erin, the description of Conor's fractious court and the Hound of Ulster's exploits capture the mythic proportions
of its source material, and are related with intelligence and wit. Like the nonpareil exemplars they are, avatars of legend and a warrior
ethos, Maeve, Connaught and Cuchullain quarrel with themselves, the gods and fate, exhibiting the pettiness of humanity and powers of
deity in common measure. Larger than life, a single man can hold back an army, the beauty of a woman can lay waste a kingdom: the stuff
of legend and myth in which parallels can be found in Homer, Valmiki or Snorri Sturluson.
But the sheer scale of these heroes and their adventures imposes a certain distance between the narrative and the modern reader, who, by
the very size of the events and characters being presented, is made ever aware of the artifice of fiction. As conscious myth and
allegory, one can appreciate these legends, but as story, as a novelization, the events and characters of this epic seem strangely inert
and absent of emotion, representing no real sense of drama, but instead symbolic actors serving set roles upon a stage whose scope is
so huge that it overshadows any sense of empathy or shared or even imagined experience. And I would suggest that in Green's decision
to recount this legend, instead of significantly reinvent it, that he missed a creative and narrative opportunity to breathe new life
into what are, from a narrative vantage point, older and to a degree archaic archetypes.
In looking back at the achievement of Homer, in part the reason why a work like The Iliad continues to resonate more than two
thousand years later was the poet's ability to infuse his myth with a humanity that transcends the era in which it was written, and
the mythic sources that inspired it. And while I am not suggesting this is entirely absent in The Tain, its identity
as myth -- its archetypal character and function -- rather than its narrative qualities and humanity, is far more evident. That Green
failed to recognize this (or maybe did and chose to ignore it in deference to textual authenticity) is ironic, considering the
repeated emphasis placed within his novel on the bards' desire not to present a mere account, but to tell a good story. The Hound
can be appreciated for presenting the The Tain in a more accessible and contemporary prose style, but as a novel it does
little to enrich the original narrative material.
In addition to the SF Site, William Thompson's reviews have appeared in Interzone, Revolution Science Fiction and Locus Online. He also has worked as a freelance editor for PS Publishing, editing The Healthy Dead and Grandma Matchie, by Steven Erikson, and Night of Knives, by Cameron Esslemont. He lives in Mesilla, New Mexico. |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
If you find any errors, typos or anything else worth mentioning,
please send it to editor@sfsite.com.
Copyright © 1996-2014 SF Site All Rights Reserved Worldwide