Back in my misspent youth I was a devotee of those corny sword and sorcery movies, usually produced on the cheap in Italy and starring muscle-bound young actors with more athletic than acting skills. These films were corny almost beyond belief, to an eager 12-year-old whose parents allowed him to attend every movie that showed up at the movie palace in tiny Gauley Bridge, W.Va. And that was a bunch of films, since the theater changed its bill four times a week, with two of the changes involving double features.
If I ever made it to Do You Want to Be a Millionaire, I might do well if the category remained on obscure actors of the ‘40s. Unfortunately, there isn’t such a category, and I’d never get past the opening round. I’m not so proficient with button pushing.
Anyway, and wow was this a long way to get back to Gilgamesh, Mr. Grundy’s new novel has about as much entertainment value as one of those long-ago epics on the small screen of the Gauley Theater, which fell to the crushing blows of a demolition team years ago.
If readers want to indulge themselves in a huge pile of silliness, with some of the most inept dialogue I’ve ever read on a printed page, then rush down to your friendly neighborhood book seller and snap a copy of that big pile of books just inside the front door. Careful, though. It weighs several pounds (it’s 575 pages long) and you could crack a toe should a copy fall from your grasp.
In other words (if you couldn’t figure out what the heck I am saying), Gilgamesh ranks as one of the major disappointments of my reading in the year 2000. Perhaps a skilled editor could have pleaded with author Grundy to change some of the ponderous dialogue. And something needs to be done with some of the narrative lapses, in which a reader must trudge through awkward exposition in order to reach a good, gore-filled battle scene.
Mr. Grundy seems uncomfortable writing about sex. Further I’d rather not go.
OK, let’s give a bit to the other side. Kirkus Reviews pronounces this novel as an energetic and respectful retelling of one of the grandest of all the masterpieces of antiquity. And Publishers Weekly calls Gilgamesh as belonging “in one of the great traditions of such works, from Naomi Mitchison to Marion Zimmer Bradley.”
