Amadan na Briona

This is a clever but long-winded retelling of Beowulf from the monster's point of view. Grendel is brilliantly realized as a petulant child, a beast who fancies himself an intellectual, sometimes tries to overcome his brutish nature but inevitably succumbs to the temptation to act like a monster and then blames it on the universe. "See what you made me do?" Grendel seems to be saying throughout the book. The dialog is often clever, but I had the same problem I have with a lot of literary fiction: Gardner's descriptive prose sometimes becomes tedious, especially the interminable and largely irrelevant-to-the-story speeches from the dragon and the priest. I'd really only recommend it if you're a fan of the original Beowulf tale; otherwise it's just a story about a monster who occasionally goes on killing sprees between monologues and bouts of self-pity.