I confess, I haven’t read Nicola Griffith’s Hild. But I most certainly will, after finding (in Farrar, Straus and Giroux’s blog Work In Progress) this excellent article about the research and thought process that went into crafting the novel’s language.
I greatly admire Ms. Griffith’s vivid depiction of her approach to… not so much recreating period language, as rendering its feel – and its social and psychological implications as well.
So much so that Hild’s time period may not be my favourite, but I just have to read a book written this way.
I’ll let you know.
Scribblings 