Old English horror with a modern twist
In this dextrous adaptation of the old English epic of Beowulf, where a hero hunts and kills monsters who disrupt social cohesion, we are relocated to a picture perfect slice of modern suburbia, inside a wealthy gated community filled with unfulfilled housewives and faithless commuter husbands.
Here Maria Dahvana Headley begins to twist the original saga into a provocative exploration of what actually constitutes a monster and monstrous behaviour, undermining the concept of hero, so we are left only with people who mix the selfless and the selfish in varying shades of ghastliness.
Grendel, the original horror at the heart of Beowulf, we meet as an innocent child and witness him maturing into manhood. Headley remains purposefully vague about his looks, so that superficial appearance can never mask what truly makes a man. More interestingly, she splits him into two: the outsider Gren and the suburban boy Dil. The yearning of the two to be together propels the story.
Beowulf himself is transformed into a troubled US cop Ben Woolf. But neither Beowulf, Gren or Dil are the main characters of this retelling; instead it is the women who step to the fore: Dana Mills, a deranged veteran of some Gulf war as Gren’s mother and Willa Herot, mother of Dil (who would have been the king’s wife in the original poem).
The story takes life through their desires to protect their children, which gradually distort into a lust for revenge, their awakening realisations of their own flaws and the social restraints that mire them. But perhaps the most entertaining characters are the mothers of the mothers, a Greek chorus of bold, cold, focused older women who provide some of the best lines.
In all, the story is a clever concept, mostly well-executed with deft moments of insight and observation, though at times all the cleverness can be a bit ovewhelming and pivotal moments of action seen through the eyes of the women can seem like you are at the bottom of the eponoymous mere, struggling to see through the murky waters to chase the silvery flashes of the story line.