Interview with Menewood audiobook narrator, Pearl Hewitt

September 30, 2023 7:16 PM

A far-ranging interview between author Nicola Griffith and audiobook narrator Pearl Hewitt on the craft. A warm and thoughtful discussion ranging from the technical details of voice exercises and DIY recording to homesickness and place names and building careers. Hewitt narrated award-winning Hild, a fantastical history of St Hilda of Whitby, and her upcoming sequel Menewood.
posted by dorothyisunderwood (3 comments total)

Oh, I loved Hild! Can't wait to read the sequel, the first part really set up some interesting dynamics. I read the first part years ago, but there are some passages that still stick in my mind - when little Hild has to cross the hall, carrying that chalice, when she first hears the Christian choir the King's new wife brought with her sing in the new church.

I'm assuming the protagonist will fully embrace Christianity in the sequel, and it will be interesting to see how that will be framed. A merely political, opportunistic choice? If you can't beat them, join them? Hild's portrayed as a cunning character, who can be be quite pragmatic, so probably. Still, my sense is that Christianity isn't getting quite the (cartoon) villain edit it's often getting in current (feminist, but not just feminist) retellings of myths set in this period of transition, where it's generally portrayed as the harbringer of patriarchy, centralisation/imperialism and authoritarianism, ending a golden age of matriarchal wisdom and freedom in perfect harmony with nature.

Don't get me wrong, of course Christianity deserves all the villain edits you care to present, as it does generally serve to promote patriarchy, etc. I don't see Nicola Griffith glossing over those aspects. But I like a bit of ambiguity, and a bit less of an idealisation of the pagan past. I can't entirely buy into of accounts of European Christianisation as an exclusively top-down-affair; in order to take over as successfully as it did, there had to be aspects genuinely attractive to the downtrodden, the common people; Nietzsche didn't call it slave morality for nothing.

For what it's worth, I definetly soured on any retelling leaning too hard on the "free, joyful, life-affirming pagans vs obedient, repressed, death-cult Christians"-angle when I heard it pushed by my most right-wing aquaintances as the true story of the Nibelungs, upstanding domestic Germanic nobility crushed by the underhanded plotting of snivelling, jumped-up Judeo-Christian globalists. It's interesting how Christian suddenly becomes Judeo-Christian in such a context (these people are definitely not about "ex oriente lux") and how the Nazis suddenly have a problem with patriarchy when they are blaming it on the Jews.

I've always been quite fascinated by Norse myth, Arthuriana, sure, also the Nibelungs (the most dispiriting national epos you could come up with). Even as a kid, I could tell that the Christianity in these stories only was a later addition, a thin veneer, papering over an alternative, older value system (honor! might makes right! live by the sword, die by the sword), and that that older value system was definitely it's own type of bullshit too.

Just say, there are lot of interesting tensions here, and I'm excited to see how Nicola Griffith is going to spin them.
posted by sohalt at 1:42 AM on October 1, 2023 [4 favorites]

That was really interesting, thank you. Liked her story of how she got into narration - lots of hard work. Interesting range she does, lots of cosy mysteries (with the "cat-speak" she mentions), lots of Regency, the odd classic (including The Lark in the Morn, which I don't think I could listen to now, but I bet she does it well), and a few non-fiction books like Sara Ahmed's Complaint!.
posted by paduasoy at 3:16 AM on October 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

That was great, thank you.
posted by clew at 8:23 AM on October 3, 2023