When I look back, it's no real surprise to me that I have turned out the way I have.

An excerpt from a book that my uncle offered me maybe ten years ago...

His voice, though powerful, was mild. Voice of a dead thing, calm as dry sticks and ice when the wind blows over them. He had a strange face that, little by litte, grew unsettling to me: it was a face, or so it seemed for an instant, from a dream I had almost forgotten. The eyes slanted downward, never blinking, unfeeling as a snake's. He had no more beard than a fish. He smiled as he spoke, but it was as if the gentle voice, the childlike yet faintly ironic smile were holding something back, some magician-power that could blast stone cliffs to ashes as lighting blasts trees.

Grendel is a 1971 novel by John Gardner. It retells Beowulf from Grendel's point of view.

Labels: book, grendel