Customer Rating: 
Summary: Distrubed....
Comment: I'm disturbed by the amount of people bashing _Grendel_. It's simply an amazing novel. Perhaps those offering sour reviews simply misunderstand the novel--Gardner, from my reading, isn't really attempting a retelling of the _Beowulf_ story. Instead, he's attempting to cast a philosophical statement *against* a philosophical school of thought that was, and still is, gaining ground when Gardner wrote _Grendel_: existentialism and nihilism, which is embraced by the dragon. Gardner just uses the Beowulf story to frame this social commentary. Consider Gardner's philosophical statement: in a time in history when so many were and are embracing the pointlessness of life, Gardner tells us that there is meaning and real in the world around us. Beowulf smashes Grendel into the wall when they finally meet and forces him to sing walls to prove to Grendel that there is meaning and that reality does exist. And what does Grendel do? He sings walls and sees a different kind of dragon. Grendel, throughout that whole novel, searches for something real, something that carries meaning, and Beowulf becomes that. People read this novel and think it's depressing--it's not. In the end there's hope. Yeah, we know Beowulf is going to die, but before he does, he's going to accomplish great things, and there will be other great rulers after him.
If you're looking for an action story, stick with _Beowulf_. But if you're looking for a philosophical novel to controvert the overwhelming onslaught of postmodernism and beliefs that we're in the world all by ourselves and should find gold and "sit on it" as the dragon tells Grendel, _Grendel_ is one of the finest craftings written to date.
Perhaps those who would denigrate _Grendel_ simply do not understand its intent; it's intent isn't to entertain you; it's intent is to teach you and force you to question. And on those grounds, it's really hard to argue that it's not a fantastic book.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Comment: As a fan of the epic _Beowulf_, Gardner's _Grendel_ was recommended to me by a colleague. The genre - re-writing a well-known story from the persepctive of another character is not new (see _Wicked_, for example), so I had a good idea of what I was getting into. Nonetheless, I was disappointed.
That Grendel is not the nasty brute portrayed in the epic poem was expected. The writing, however, was difficult for me get into. At times Gardner wrote in a first-person narrative, but inexplicably he would later change to a third person ("Time-Space cross section: Wealtheow. Cut A: It was the second year ...") It felt totally out of place and character for the story as it was being told. Gardner was also terribly repetitive. I get that he was, to some extent, imitating the style and form of the original - but he did so without the panache of the original, instead merely sounding ridiculous.
The action and interaction between Grendel and the thanes was laborious and frankly uninteresting; again, the original epic was able to keep and maintain my attention - Gardner, much less so. To his credit, Garnder paints a sympathetic Grendel and one in which readers get a clearer understanding of his actions and behaviours. Still, it is not a book I would recommend.
Customer Rating:
Summary: If you are a high school senior...
Comment: If you are like myself a high school senior reading this book for English class, GOOD LUCK! It is by far the least interesting novel I have ever read. Skip it and just look up the sparknotes.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Terrible Book
Comment: I thought this book would be kinda cool to read since I'm a big fan of Beowulf and have read it several times. Man was I wrong. The writing is terrible. Grendel isn't a monster, he's a cry baby. A story from the "other perspective" has so much potential, but this author didn't use any of it. After reading this book, I wondered if John Gardner read Beowulf at all.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Civilization Ruins Everything
Comment: This is not the simple tale of what moves the monster to attack the mead hall. Yes, this is the classic Beowulf tale told from Grendel's perspective, but it's no easy narrative of me-against-him. There is an awful lot more going on here.
Grendel is the basic human, the proto-human animal stripped of all aspects of civilization, what the human is before civilization has had the chance to poison him. He wholly self-centered, a world unto himself. He is pure action and the rawest of emotion, no patience for thought and contemplation. He's capricious, with no moral sense, no real logic. Action is the only thing he knows, and it is what it is, consistent or not. But evil? Not in the least.
As civilization rises, Grendel observes, as only a monster can observe a human, that everything we touch we corrupt and ruin. Trees fall, water is fouled and the game leaves the forest. Ultimately, humanity is pointless and futile; we invent all of our problems. We create envy, ambition, manipulation, subjugation, hierarchy, religion, hope, confidence, arrogance, pride, rationalization and ultimately hubris, and they intertwine to ruin us, as individuals and as tribes. The joy is all around us, as Grendel describes, the bounty and its beauty, life and nature, but we instead choose competition, struggle, corruption, loss, violence and unnatural death.
As civilization coalesces about him, Grendel draws closer to death, and he learns from the humans the value of the vulgar, what it means to be deceitful, what evil really is. He learns agonizingly what solitude is, and wants so desperately to fit in, but cannot. He cannot adapt, and is doomed, and somewhere down deep inside, he knows it. He wants to be included, but he cannot be and never will be. His time is ending, and he must as well. As reason and logic and knowledge come to crowd men's thoughts, his power is ever weaker, until the time comes that he meets his match.
Grendel's story is the sorrow of existence, solitary in birth, life and in death. His mother is an absolute alien, unknowable. She can never truly be his friend, never be his companion or his contemporary. She is the constant reminder of age and the specter of isolation, loneliness and death. She is the ever-present reminder of the future, and is estranged by her very offspring because of it. As a woman she is unknowable, a representation of something to which Grendel mysteriously is drawn but at the same time he is repulsed; he has no concept of how to relate to or respond to his lust, and it escapes him once again in violence.
I recommend readers tackle the original Beowulf: A New Verse Translation (Bilingual Edition) before coming to this revisionist approach. But remember this is not simply a retelling from another point of view. This book is a winner, poetic and lyrical, turning the ancient story of the man versus the monster from one of epic battle and victory to a cautionary tale of what it means to exist in the world of Man.
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