BBB The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Headley

Originally recorded: 08/21/2022

Length: 00:58:37

There are spoilers! “I really we are a last-act kind of people." Sadie wasn’t kidding. The Bitches welcome Katherine and TikTok guest favorite, Sadie with the intention of discussing Maria Dahvana Headley’s The Mere Wife, and we do, along with a hurricane-sorted list of other things. The time stamps may be your friend today – but we think it’s more fun just to wind around with us!

Links for this episode

The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Headley

• Amazon
• Kindle
• Audible

Beowulf: A New Translation by Maria Dahvana Headley

• Amazon
• Kindle
• Audible

00:56 And we are live with guests of Books with Bitches & Bourbon – Sadie and Katherine, two of the smartest women I know

02:30 The Boys, Katherine and Ireland, our cups, snack break  

08:10 I think we are getting to the book – until I suspect Reba has killed a frog, leading me to confess my whiskey horror

11:53 Book Take 2 – until Sadie realizes for the first time that Ape is old

14:10 Book Take 3 – we do much better. We get through the premise, explanation of Eco-Crit

18:30 How do you pronounce “mini-series”? I didn’t realize that was a thing…

23:44 Sadie realizes that my kid could finish off her power team

28:00 TV series, including Big Brother – we have problems with Jasmine for real… And, did you know that the English to Southern Dictionary is a thing?

30:45 Book Take 4 – we are doing amazing this time, until my husband walks in and starts flirting

33:40 But we bring it back quick! Progress!!

38:45 The clock goes off and starts a small conversation about holidays staying in their lane

41:45 Book Take 5 – we think we are finished until we remembered we really wanted to mention Headley’s Beowulftranslation

45:35 Two reading excerpts of Headley’s Beowulf and we discuss

48:45 The association with Doctor Strange, the Scarlet Witch, and Iron Man – yes, it’s there

56:25 Excerpt reading of The Mere Wife and good night…wow, that was a ride!

The Mere Wife

Author: Maria Dahvana Headley

Genre: Fiction/Fantasy

Published: 2018

Pages: 308

Selected: April

Month: March 2022

BBB Stars: 4.5

Description (from Goodreads)

Two mothers—a suburban housewife and a battle-hardened veteran—struggle to protect those they love in this modern retelling of Beowulf. 

From the perspective of those who live in Herot Hall, the suburb is a paradise. Picket fences divide buildings—high and gabled—and the community is entirely self-sustaining. Each house has its own fireplace, each fireplace is fitted with a container of lighter fluid, and outside—in lawns and on playgrounds—wildflowers seed themselves in neat rows. But for those who live surreptitiously along Herot Hall’s periphery, the subdivision is a fortress guarded by an intense network of gates, surveillance cameras, and motion-activated lights. 

For Willa, the wife of Roger Herot (heir of Herot Hall), life moves at a charmingly slow pace. She flits between mommy groups, playdates, cocktail hour, and dinner parties, always with her son, Dylan, in tow. Meanwhile, in a cave in the mountains just beyond the limits of Herot Hall lives Gren, short for Grendel, as well as his mother, Dana, a former soldier who gave birth as if by chance. Dana didn’t want Gren, didn’t plan Gren, and doesn’t know how she got Gren, but when she returned from war, there he was. When Gren, unaware of the borders erected to keep him at bay, ventures into Herot Hall and runs off with Dylan, Dana’s and Willa’s worlds collide.

Books with Bitches and Bourbon Review

            This one didn’t leave any in-between reactions – we had one DNF and one who read it four times! But there were more of the latter than the former, so this beautiful novel by Headley came in at 4.5 stars. An evocative retelling of the classic epic Beowulf, Headley’s work is poetically rendered and offers a wealth of conversation pieces.

Beowulf: A New Translation

Author: Maria Dahvana Headley

Genre: Epic Poetry

Published: 2020

Pages: 140

Selected: n/a

Month: n/a

BBB Stars: n/a

Description (from Goodreads)

A new, feminist translation of Beowulf by the author of The Mere Wife.

Nearly twenty years after Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf — and fifty years after the translation that continues to torment high-school students around the world — there is a radical new verse translation of the epic poem by Maria Dahvana Headley, which brings to light elements never before translated into English.

A man seeks to prove himself as a hero. A monster seeks silence in his territory. A warrior seeks to avenge her murdered son. A dragon ends it all. These familiar components of the epic poem are seen with a novelist’s eye toward gender, genre, and history. Beowulf has always been a tale of entitlement and encroachment — of powerful men seeking to become more powerful and one woman seeking justice for her child — but this version brings new context to an old story. While crafting her contemporary adaptation, Headley unearthed significant shifts lost over centuries of translation; her Beowulf is one for the twenty-first century. 

Books with Bitches and Bourbon Review

            The Bitches didn’t read this one, but since we got into it pretty good on the podcast, I thought I’d include it here. For what it’s worth, Sadie and I loved it – Katherine (a Heaney loyalist), not so much.