The Green Knight

Like many authors, Vera Chapman tackles the daunting task of retelling and rounding out the characters of a well-known story. Unlike most authors, her retelling succeeds because it reads like her own story. While you know how it must end, you look forward to the fun of getting there. The story is the tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in which Sir Gawain meets a challenge of almost certain death. However, by some deft family-history work (which is completely possible to my knowledge) she succeeds in making the characters her own, whose personalities are new and whose attitudes are modern and easy to sympathize with while not being anachronistic. What drew me into the story most, though, was the author's wonderful use of language. She writes in a lush descriptive style which leaves the readers with as clear a picture as a medieval tapestry. These vivid descriptions make the pages pass quickly and make the book impossible to put down. Luckily, the book is s! ! hort enough to make reading it in one (long!) sitting possible, since Chapman also knows how to make her storytelling concise while maintaining the atmosphere of a royal court. I highly recommend this book to anyone, teenage or adult, who loves to hear a good story being retold.