A "proper" tale about that time now, and a reread of something I had consumed countless times as a child - each time wondering why I wanted this simple, barren tale only to close it after the last page and be suffused by a special feeling.
Like every other good thing I remembered, it doesn't hold up to scrutiny in many parts. It starts out with references to heathens and black faces that sit uneasily today, although the book is a reworking of a 12th century poem and people from Africa and Asia are just like aliens from space, their differences remarked as curiosities rather than cruelly, see also the rather nice meeting of the mixed race offspring at the very end.
I'm not sure if Lancelot was ever mixed up with Parzival (Perceval, Percival), but I well remember how the second half of the book is mostly given over to Gawain - the guy really seems to have the best, least tragic adventures in any retelling (except now on TV). I mourn my old impression of greatness about Parzival, since everything seems both smaller and meaner now, and his redemption a bad joke in that he really didn't do anything nor had anybody done anything bad to him, despite his moping.
There's mention of Utrependragon, Arthur keeps court in Nantes, and most interestingly perhaps it's never mentioned what is in the holy grail, just about the castle being built for it and only the elect becoming king - the fisher king thing is hinted at only in the most superficial sense!
This book won a great award, and I'd still defend the writer, who'd done reworkings into prose of all the great myths and might have been 70 when she wrote that. At some points I can imagine how Eschenbach's poem might have gone, at others there are endearing details that I thought must have come from her. Since this was also published as "Light on Monsalvat" I must have read about the other knights in her only other KA book? Kundrie, the "witch" deserves more focus as well; Klinschor seems the castle full of maidens that Monty Python didn't invent after all? Although in this book, P really isn't pure, even though that doesn't seem to matter when he suddenly gets made grail king after all. Best of them is G's horse, Gringuljete, ugly and mad and totally devoted to him. :)