Recently, while doing my usual internet browsing during the spare moments between the events of my day, I came across some book recommendations. I can’t, for the life of me, remember where I found them or who was providing them. All I remember is that the first book this person recommended was one I’d recently read and loved (though I can’t remember what this book was either), so I wound up browsing the rest of the recommendations and bought all of the ones that sounded interesting. In my own defense, I haven’t been sleeping well for a while now and my memory has been pretty spotty. I probably wouldn’t have remembered this book at all if I hadn’t ordered it immediately since I have absolutely no memory of placing this order. But I did order it and, as it turns out, all the other books that I chose were preorders for things releasing this fall, so I had just one new book to read. After sitting on my table for a while (I was in the middle of my Dresden Files reading binge when I ordered it), I finally cracked it open during the day I was restlessly pacing my apartment a couple weekends ago.

The story, Spear by Nicola Griffith, had been pitched in this list of recommendations as being about a lesbian raised in the middle of nowhere who wanted to be a knight, which sounded pretty much right up my alley, but it wasn’t a very detailed description of the book. It was effective, though, given that it got me to read the book and that I still remember it despite remebering literally nothing else about that list of recommendations, but it also set me up with blinders. Turns out most descriptions of the book, including those produced by the author, list it as a queer adaption of the Arthurian legend of Percival, the Grail Knight. As they should, since that’s exactly what it is, with a bit of Welsh naming and Celtic mythology woven in to a very history-informed retelling of one slice of the larger Arthurian legend.

I figured this out, eventually, when I finally learned the protagonist’s name, Peretur. Given my own background in medieval studies, my love of Arthurian legend (ESPECIALLY adaptions of it), and my interest in language and names, it was incredibly clear that this, on top of several other names and locations, was an linguistic shifting of some of the common names out of Arthurian legend. It was a really fun moment, to be reading a book I’m enjoying on its own merits and discover that there’s a whole other level to it that I’d somehow missed (I never even read the description on the dust jacket, which would have given it away). Adding to the fun was the knowledge that I’d only figured it out at that moment because I’d studied so much about the various languages surrounding Medieval English Literature and the way that Arthurian legends have been adopted and adapted by other western Europen countries. That fact that it’s an adaption gets much more obvious later on, but without the knowledge of the languages involved in the development of the English language and the meaning behind parts of names from Arthurian legend, I would not have realized it until almost halfway through the book.

The first chunk of the book details the growth of our young protagonist through the lense of her relationship with her mother. Her mother, for reasons that are only explained when our protagonist demands a name, has refused to give her a proper name, instead alternating between a few nicknames based on how she’s feeling at the time. This is a sore spot for our protagonist, since her mother is unwell and frequently alternates between a few different moods due to a tragedy in her mother’s past that is occasionally hinted at in this section of the book and more fully revealed later (I figured it out from some fairly obvious subtext, but the story doesn’t confirm the subtext for quite a while). Still, she doesn’t have much she can do to change things as a child and grows up separate from everyone but her mother. Eventually, as she beings maturing, she starts to take note of the world and people around her, and is driven to explore beyond the limits her mother imposed on her. Eventually, as she is inspired to travel further and fight for a cause she believes in, she demands a name from her mother and leaves her behind.

This all happens in the first 30ish pages of the book, and the rest is Peretur searching not only for a place she believes she is fated to find, but also a sense of community and belonging that she has been denied by her mother. Sure, her mother cared for her and raised her, but she was somtimes abusive or neglectful and their parting was not peaceful. She cast Peretur out when Peretur decided to leave, choosing to do what she could to keep herself safe even if that meant driving a magical wedge (a geas) between them. Peretur stumbles along the way, finding everything more difficult and complicated than she thought it would be, even for someone with her level of prowess and magical ability (she can communicate with animals and the world around her, giving her startling insight into the actions other people are going to take, which, combined with her physical hardiness, makes her a formidable foe for any would-be combatant). Peretur does not have an easy life and though the book glides past much of her first year away from home, it eventually slows down to show us the moment-to-moment rise and fall of her arc. We see her struggles, her successes, her failures, and the way she sees herself first as an outsider and then as a member of a community. The shortness of the narative means that we don’t spend as much time as we might want to learning about the characters and seeing how Peretur fits into the much larger body of this adaption of Arthurian legend, but we get the important pieces of information about the specific section of that legend that pertains to our protagonist.

Percival has always been, in my opinion, an odd figure in Arthurian legend. He shows up, wows everyone, becomes the newest shining knight in a series of shining and and then fallen knights, embarks on the quest for the Holy Grail, and eventually succeeds at it. After that, he’s pretty much gone again, now dedicated to protecting the Grail or just never mentioned again, depending on the adaption of the legend that you’re reading. Griffith remarks on this as well, in the section at the back of the book where she discusses the choices she made in this new take on an old legend, mentioning that much of what is said about Percival outside of the Grail Quest could easily be chalked up to various translators and record keepings wanting to explain away Percival’s disappearance form the Legend by including him in a list of the dead at Arthur’s final battle or by dismissing him as the new protector of the Grail. What this meant for Griffith, though, was that she had a faily discrete bit of story she could pull from (the Grail Quest) and a lot of blanks that she could fill in (where Peretur came from, why she was a peerless knight, and where she eventually vanished off to) to make a whole story out of what often felt to me like a way to wrap up the Grail Quest with a neat little bow (which is important, given how long the Grail Quest goes on in most Arthurian legends and how many people run off on it, something even this adaption addresses).

It’s really a well-done bit of literature and I highly recommend it if any of the stuff I’ve written here sounds interesting to you. I was a bit scattered in my approach here, as I tried to maintain balance between my desire to write up a whole academic analysis and my need to produce this blog post on a reasonable time frame. I also wanted to avoid spoilers, which meant I had to divert where I was going a few times and there’s only so much editing can do to clean up interrupting my own train of thought before I did a summary of the whole story or discussed the specific interpretations and thematic elements of this story’s conclusion in comparison with the general purpose and themes of most Arthurian legends. While I’m definitely super interested in all that, I know most people probably aren’t and I’d rather save it for a discussion with someone who has read the book than just plop it all out on the internet for no one to engage with. So, if you do read the book and want to talk about Arthurian legend, drop me a line! Otherwise, just read this fun, fairly short book and enjoy a great take on an old story.