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Book Review: Hild by Nicola Griffith
Jan. 26th, 2016 03:33 pmTitle: Hild
Author: Nicola Griffith
Published: New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 560
Total Page Count: 174,895
Text Number: 511
Read Because: fan of the author, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: In 7th Century England, a land divided into seven kingdoms and undergoing conversion to Christianity, one woman is a nexus of change: Hild, king's adviser and future saint, here coming into her power. This novel is entrenched in its setting, and the density of names, politics, and daily detail makes for a slow start and always threatens to become overwhelming. (The appendix helps; historical context would, too.) But Griffith knows how to pinpoint the moments when worldbuilding, character arcs, and themes coincide. This book is never easy to read but it develops an immersive rhythm, long, slow, thudding; intricate, intimate; fueled always by Hild, by her active mind and her needs and her knowledge that she is the light of the world. I'm only disappointed by the ending—not in itself bad, but feeling like (because it is!) only half the story. But that half we have is singular.
(that moment when it doesn’t occur to you to mention in a review that Hild has diverse, dynamic representations of gender, gendered roles, and sexuality, women with political power, with physical power, changing the world; not because you didn’t notice, not because it wasn’t the point, but because you take it for granted from Griffith; Griffith, who wrote about a single-gender world that faced down the trope’s longstanding sexism to instead provide diverse cultures and relationships and lives because she has always insisted that women are people
is actually a pretty good moment)
Author: Nicola Griffith
Published: New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 560
Total Page Count: 174,895
Text Number: 511
Read Because: fan of the author, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: In 7th Century England, a land divided into seven kingdoms and undergoing conversion to Christianity, one woman is a nexus of change: Hild, king's adviser and future saint, here coming into her power. This novel is entrenched in its setting, and the density of names, politics, and daily detail makes for a slow start and always threatens to become overwhelming. (The appendix helps; historical context would, too.) But Griffith knows how to pinpoint the moments when worldbuilding, character arcs, and themes coincide. This book is never easy to read but it develops an immersive rhythm, long, slow, thudding; intricate, intimate; fueled always by Hild, by her active mind and her needs and her knowledge that she is the light of the world. I'm only disappointed by the ending—not in itself bad, but feeling like (because it is!) only half the story. But that half we have is singular.
(that moment when it doesn’t occur to you to mention in a review that Hild has diverse, dynamic representations of gender, gendered roles, and sexuality, women with political power, with physical power, changing the world; not because you didn’t notice, not because it wasn’t the point, but because you take it for granted from Griffith; Griffith, who wrote about a single-gender world that faced down the trope’s longstanding sexism to instead provide diverse cultures and relationships and lives because she has always insisted that women are people
is actually a pretty good moment)
