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New Tales from the Mabinogion #3
The Meat Tree
A dangerous tale of desire, DNA, incest and flowers plays out within the wreckage of an ancient spaceship in The Meat Tree: an absorbing retelling of one of the best-known Welsh myths by prize-winning writer and poet, Gwyneth Lewis.
An elderly investigator and his female apprentice hope to extract the fate of the ship's crew from its antiquated virtual reality game system, but their empirical approach falters as the story tangles with their own imagination.
By imposing a distance of another 200 years and millions of light years between the reader and the medieval myth, Gwyneth Lewis brings the magical tale of Blodeuwedd, a woman made of flowers, closer than ever before: maybe uncomfortably so.
After all, what man has any idea how sap burns in the veins of a woman?
An elderly investigator and his female apprentice hope to extract the fate of the ship's crew from its antiquated virtual reality game system, but their empirical approach falters as the story tangles with their own imagination.
By imposing a distance of another 200 years and millions of light years between the reader and the medieval myth, Gwyneth Lewis brings the magical tale of Blodeuwedd, a woman made of flowers, closer than ever before: maybe uncomfortably so.
After all, what man has any idea how sap burns in the veins of a woman?
256 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2010
3 people are currently reading
163 people want to read
About the author
Gwyneth Lewis
41 books30 followersGwyneth Lewis was Wales' National Poet from 2005-06, the first writer to be given the Welsh laureateship. She has published eight books of poetry in Welsh and English. Chaotic Angels (Bloodaxe Books, 2005) brings together the poems from her three English collections, Parables & Faxes, Zero Gravity and Keeping Mum. Her latest book is Sparrow Tree. Gwyneth wrote the six-foot-high words for the front of Cardiff's Wales Millennium Centre (which are located just in front of the space-time continuum, as seen on Dr Who and Torchwood.)
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
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October 26, 2016Had to DNF this one, will talk about it in a wrap up.
December 26, 2010
This is one of the latest two volumes in Seren Books’ series reworking the medieval Welsh tales of the Mabinogion. I don’t really know those myths, but, luckily for me, there’s a handy synopsis at the back of each book that helped me get up to speed. However, when I read the synopsis in Gwyneth Lewis’s The Meat Tree (based on the fourth branch of the Mabinogion, the story of Blodeuwedd), I thought, how do you make a novel out of this, when it’s so disjointed by comparison?
Well, Lewis tackles that issue head-on and has come up with a fascinating solution. The Meat Tree is set in 2210 and focuses on Campion, an ‘Inspector of Wrecks’, and his apprentice Nona. They investigate a ship which has apparently come from Earth, though surely it’s too well-preserved, and there’s no sign of what happened to the crew. In the hope of gaining some clues, Campion and Nona turn to the virtual reality system placed prominently on the ship; this plunges them into the tale of Blodeuwedd – but what was its significance to the crew?
Representing the myth as a VR game addresses its episodic nature, as the protagonists experience it episodically (‘the progression of the plot can feel very uncomfortable,’ says Campion [p. 37]). But, more significantly than this, it also puts a distance between the myth itself and our viewpoint characters, which allows Lewis to interrogate the myth as she goes, as well as retelling it. The text becomes something of a live laboratory, as Campion and Nona try to puzzle out what the story might have meant to the people who told it (both in their immediate fictional context and, by implication, to the original medieval tellers); they explore issues such as the symbolic representation of gender and power in a way that doesn’t feel at all forced.
On a narrative level, though, The Meat Tree is also fascinating. The story is told entirely through the medium of Campion’s and Nona’s ‘synapse logs’ and ‘joint thought channel’, so that’s layer another of perception to add to all the rest. The protagonists’ identities shift and accrete (for example, near the beginning, we have Nona and Campion in the game playing male characters who have been turned into animals, one male and one female – and how well Lewis handles the writing of it), and even eventually bleed out of the game. There are also moments that bring the bare details of the myth sharply off the page, such as when Blodeuwydd (a woman created magically from flowers) realises that she is ‘a flower made of meat’ (p. 173).
Towards the end of the novel, there is perhaps too much of a sense of the two protagonists slotting everything together conveniently – but, then again, what else was going to happen? It would be too much of a let-down if the mystery of the ship stayed a mystery, and there’s no one else to do the figuring-out. Whatever, The Meat Tree is a spectacular work of the imagination.
Well, Lewis tackles that issue head-on and has come up with a fascinating solution. The Meat Tree is set in 2210 and focuses on Campion, an ‘Inspector of Wrecks’, and his apprentice Nona. They investigate a ship which has apparently come from Earth, though surely it’s too well-preserved, and there’s no sign of what happened to the crew. In the hope of gaining some clues, Campion and Nona turn to the virtual reality system placed prominently on the ship; this plunges them into the tale of Blodeuwedd – but what was its significance to the crew?
Representing the myth as a VR game addresses its episodic nature, as the protagonists experience it episodically (‘the progression of the plot can feel very uncomfortable,’ says Campion [p. 37]). But, more significantly than this, it also puts a distance between the myth itself and our viewpoint characters, which allows Lewis to interrogate the myth as she goes, as well as retelling it. The text becomes something of a live laboratory, as Campion and Nona try to puzzle out what the story might have meant to the people who told it (both in their immediate fictional context and, by implication, to the original medieval tellers); they explore issues such as the symbolic representation of gender and power in a way that doesn’t feel at all forced.
On a narrative level, though, The Meat Tree is also fascinating. The story is told entirely through the medium of Campion’s and Nona’s ‘synapse logs’ and ‘joint thought channel’, so that’s layer another of perception to add to all the rest. The protagonists’ identities shift and accrete (for example, near the beginning, we have Nona and Campion in the game playing male characters who have been turned into animals, one male and one female – and how well Lewis handles the writing of it), and even eventually bleed out of the game. There are also moments that bring the bare details of the myth sharply off the page, such as when Blodeuwydd (a woman created magically from flowers) realises that she is ‘a flower made of meat’ (p. 173).
Towards the end of the novel, there is perhaps too much of a sense of the two protagonists slotting everything together conveniently – but, then again, what else was going to happen? It would be too much of a let-down if the mystery of the ship stayed a mystery, and there’s no one else to do the figuring-out. Whatever, The Meat Tree is a spectacular work of the imagination.
Read
January 2, 2018Pretty good. This engaged the reader in the story of the Fourth Branch well and built up suspense and mystery effectively. However, the ending was extremely disappointing and scientifically inaccurate and didn't resolve the mysteries in a satisfying way at all. Enjoyable easy read. I really liked the stuff about the stories reflecting the history of the people but I didn't actually understand a lot of it... which I don't think was my fault.
October 27, 2024
4.25 stars
December 9, 2012
Science fiction meets The Mabinogion. Unusual. I wasn't sure how it would all come together, but actually it did so quite well: it wasn't a strange mash-up, but a melding together that happened slowly, allowing the reader to keep pace. I thought it was pretty well done, and I think it's possibly my favourite so far of this series of retellings.
Have to say, though, I'm not reading any of them for characters, because they're so much more focused on a clever new tilt on whichever myth they chose (or were assigned, I don't know how it worked). They end up interesting, but light and somewhat forgettable -- you remember the twist on the story better than anything else about it, so in a few weeks I'll mostly remember that this involved a spaceship, virtual reality, and... but that would be telling.
Have to say, though, I'm not reading any of them for characters, because they're so much more focused on a clever new tilt on whichever myth they chose (or were assigned, I don't know how it worked). They end up interesting, but light and somewhat forgettable -- you remember the twist on the story better than anything else about it, so in a few weeks I'll mostly remember that this involved a spaceship, virtual reality, and... but that would be telling.
May 7, 2020
I actually really enjoyed this bizarre little retelling. As what seems to be usual for me, I didn’t know the original story which made it all the more interesting as the story developed. Who would have thunk that a story based around VR would work so well with its traditional roots!
December 17, 2022
Lewis retells the Fourth Branch in Space. The book pulls in different directions and never fully reconciles its parts.
Anyone who reads the Fourth Branch more than once must ponder the incidents in the story. Surely Gwydion knows his uncle will punish him? Why does he fail to learn from his punishments? Why does he shame his sister in public, not once but three times? Why does LLeu tell his wife the strange circumstances that are the only way in which he can be killed?
Lewis offers answers to these questions.
The frame story, in which an elderly man and young woman investigate a space wreck, and play a VR game which is the Fourth Branch, in order to discover what happened to the original crew, seems less interesting than the Fourth Branch itself. The two characters seem flat and the ending seems to collapse the story.
The story does sets up a situation where two people can be voices for a reading of the original Welsh story. Lewis' version of the story is interesting. As you'd expect from her the writing is very good. The conjuring of the flower woman, and what a woman made of flowers might feel and think and see is evidence of linguist skill and imagination working on the basic material of the story.
If all retellings are readings, then there is a reading on offer here which answers some of the basic questions raised by the original story. In particular, while most readers wonder why Lleu tells his wife the bizarre requirements that have to be met before he can be killed, Lewis (Or her character) advances a coherent explanation beyond the usual, why is he so dumb..
The book is an entertaining vehicle for an exploration of the Fourth Branch.
Anyone who reads the Fourth Branch more than once must ponder the incidents in the story. Surely Gwydion knows his uncle will punish him? Why does he fail to learn from his punishments? Why does he shame his sister in public, not once but three times? Why does LLeu tell his wife the strange circumstances that are the only way in which he can be killed?
Lewis offers answers to these questions.
The frame story, in which an elderly man and young woman investigate a space wreck, and play a VR game which is the Fourth Branch, in order to discover what happened to the original crew, seems less interesting than the Fourth Branch itself. The two characters seem flat and the ending seems to collapse the story.
The story does sets up a situation where two people can be voices for a reading of the original Welsh story. Lewis' version of the story is interesting. As you'd expect from her the writing is very good. The conjuring of the flower woman, and what a woman made of flowers might feel and think and see is evidence of linguist skill and imagination working on the basic material of the story.
If all retellings are readings, then there is a reading on offer here which answers some of the basic questions raised by the original story. In particular, while most readers wonder why Lleu tells his wife the bizarre requirements that have to be met before he can be killed, Lewis (Or her character) advances a coherent explanation beyond the usual, why is he so dumb..
The book is an entertaining vehicle for an exploration of the Fourth Branch.
May 31, 2022
For me this was a complete misfire and/or mishit. It’s a retelling of a story from the Mabinogion, which must, I think, be pretty bizarre in the first place in the way that folk tales/myths can be, but for me it was not enhanced by setting it in a futurescape in which space junk wreck-inspectors discover a ship and relive through their ‘synapse lo’g and ‘joint thought channel’ the Virtual Reality of the Blodeuwedd story. I struggled to want to follow it because the two first person narrators, one female (young) and one male (old, about to retire), were given such dull, unstyled, or destyled, voices. (If that was supposed to mirror the idea of a narrative told through people’s thoughts, it didn’t work for me.) These narrators seem to spend a lot of time playing roles in the virtual world, involving gender swapping and I just couldn’t follow it.
Very occasionally there were brilliant flashes of writing describing flowers and naturescapes, and it seemed to me the whole story would have been better told in that way, or even, since I understand Gwyneth Lewis is a poet, in verse. As it is, I found the whole concept overwrought, and Lewis seemed to be writing against her natural grain.
Very occasionally there were brilliant flashes of writing describing flowers and naturescapes, and it seemed to me the whole story would have been better told in that way, or even, since I understand Gwyneth Lewis is a poet, in verse. As it is, I found the whole concept overwrought, and Lewis seemed to be writing against her natural grain.
October 13, 2017
Modern telling of a story from the Mabinogion. As I did not know the story at all, having not been brought up on Welsh stories it was interesting to see how the story unfolded in the most unexpected and sometimes rather shocking way. The book is set in the future with an inspector of abandoned space craft and his apprentice. In order to find out why the vessel they are currently working on has been abandoned they decide to participate in a virtual reality game that it appears the crew had been playing before they disappeared. And find themselves in a medieval setting... I have read another of these re-telling of stories from the Mabinogion and do enjoy them. It is a way of making them accessible needing to know your Welsh or feel like you are reading a fairy tale.
June 11, 2021
Welsh mythology meets science fiction, The Meat Tree is a retelling of the story of Lleu and Blodeuwedd in the Mabinogion, a collection of medieval Welsh tales. The narrative told through a series of thought logs was quite an interesting and digestable format, but Lewis's forced attempts in connecting jumbled, miscellaneous elements of space travels to the original myth made the book a confusing mess. The awkward inclusion of the two characters's introspection, as an adjunct to the VR storyline, was a desultory exploration of personal freights. 2 stars for creativity but I fail to see how the sci-fi element adds to the original myth- appealing concept, poor execution.
January 31, 2020
A retelling of a welsh myth, set in space. There’s a brief synopsis of the myth at the end in case you didn’t understand, but turns out I did it just makes no sense because myths. Two brothers are turned into animals and take turns impregnating each other. A woman is made from flowers and gets her lover to kill her husband the only way he is vulnerable - one foot on the edge of a bath, the other on a goat, obviously. I feel like I’m missing some significance in here somewhere probably.
January 9, 2022
A virtual reality program on an abandoned spaceship in orbit of Mars may provide the secret to existence itself.
A bold, science fiction, take on the myth of Lleu and Blodewedd, the magical woman created from the flowers of the forest. Lewis forces readers to question the very foundations of our understanding of reality and our place in it.
A bold, science fiction, take on the myth of Lleu and Blodewedd, the magical woman created from the flowers of the forest. Lewis forces readers to question the very foundations of our understanding of reality and our place in it.
May 10, 2020
Interesting take on the myth. At first I didn't quite get why it should be set on a spaceship and why 2 supposedly professional wreck investigators would spend all their time in VR games but it all came together quite nicely in the end.
October 7, 2017
Brilliant re-telling of classic Welsh myth!
August 17, 2022
Alarmingly sensual.
dnf
June 11, 2018Gave up on this at page 134. A little too much casual mentioning of rape for my liking. This isn't the kind of writing style I like either. An interesting premise but it just felt pointless and distant as I read on. Basically, it just wasn't very good. Sad times.
September 18, 2013
The Meat Tree is one of eight novels published by Seren, an independent Welsh publisher, in which contemporary Welsh writers reimagine the traditional tales of the Mabinogian for the twenty-first century, (or in the case of The Meat Tree, for the twenty-third.)
The Meat Tree is based on the story of Blodeuwedd, a woman made of flowers, incidentally the same story that Alan Garner used in The Owl Service, if anyone has read that. According to the author It's a tale of 'rape, incest, bestiality, miracle births and murder' and there must have been an awful lot of editing before the story was deemed suitable for the children's version of the Mabinogion that I had when I was younger. The first part of the tale (the original version is given in the afterword) will give you a taste:
'Math was the lord of Gwynedd and Pryderi of land to the south. Math could only live if his feet we're in the lap of a virgin, except when there was a war.
Goewin, his foot holder, was the most beautiful maiden in the land and Math's nephew, Gilfaethwy, desired her. So Gilfaethwy's brother, Gwydion, the best storyteller in the world, engineered a war with the south and while the king was away Gilfaethwy raped Goewin. When Math discovered this he married Goewin as recompense. He punished his nephews by turning them into animals for three years, deer for the first year, then boar, then wolves. He forced them to breed and have offspring, whom he fostered.'
.
So much for the original myth: the actual book takes place on a spaceship in the year 2210 where a retiring Inspector of Wrecks is reluctantly taking an equally reluctant apprentice for his last mission, to investigate a spaceship abandoned from the first years of space exploration. Finding no bodies, they investigate the ancient virtual reality consoles left behind for any clues to what has happened to the spaceship's occupants. And then it does get quite strange...
The Meat Tree is based on the story of Blodeuwedd, a woman made of flowers, incidentally the same story that Alan Garner used in The Owl Service, if anyone has read that. According to the author It's a tale of 'rape, incest, bestiality, miracle births and murder' and there must have been an awful lot of editing before the story was deemed suitable for the children's version of the Mabinogion that I had when I was younger. The first part of the tale (the original version is given in the afterword) will give you a taste:
'Math was the lord of Gwynedd and Pryderi of land to the south. Math could only live if his feet we're in the lap of a virgin, except when there was a war.
Goewin, his foot holder, was the most beautiful maiden in the land and Math's nephew, Gilfaethwy, desired her. So Gilfaethwy's brother, Gwydion, the best storyteller in the world, engineered a war with the south and while the king was away Gilfaethwy raped Goewin. When Math discovered this he married Goewin as recompense. He punished his nephews by turning them into animals for three years, deer for the first year, then boar, then wolves. He forced them to breed and have offspring, whom he fostered.'
.
So much for the original myth: the actual book takes place on a spaceship in the year 2210 where a retiring Inspector of Wrecks is reluctantly taking an equally reluctant apprentice for his last mission, to investigate a spaceship abandoned from the first years of space exploration. Finding no bodies, they investigate the ancient virtual reality consoles left behind for any clues to what has happened to the spaceship's occupants. And then it does get quite strange...
November 3, 2011
The Meat Tree combines two genres I love to read but often aren’t combined in literature: Welsh fiction and SF. Lewis manages to breathe new life into an old tale and creates an original yet faithful story. However it isn’t without its flaws. The choice to use just the two characters’ thoughts to narrate the story was ambitious and doesn’t always work. Half way through the novel there’s a clunky bit where the Inspector asks himself: So what do we know so far about this ship? and goes on to describe the plot so far. Despite these moments, the plot does tick along and there’s enough mystery to intrigue you even if you are familiar with the original myth. Blodeuwedd and Gronw Pebr’s affair is my favourite part of the novel. Lewis uses some of the language from the book The Intelligence of Flowers to describe the couple’s lovemaking. It’s a stroke of genius as it creates a sensual and innovative scene that highlights Blodeuwedd’s flowery heritage. A flawed but ambitious novel.
November 29, 2010
As a standalone science fiction novel (measured up against something like Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris) it’s not a classic; it feels like a novelisation of an episode of The Outer Limits and I’m talking about the nineties relaunch not the sixties originals: perfectly watchable, reasonably high production values, ties everything up neatly at the end but missing something.
As an adaptation of the source material and an introduction to it the book does a pretty decent job and I would think those who have to study the original text would find this a most pleasant way to start to get to grips with the text because that’s what the two protagonists are trying to do and they takes us along with them.
You can read my full review on my blog here.
As an adaptation of the source material and an introduction to it the book does a pretty decent job and I would think those who have to study the original text would find this a most pleasant way to start to get to grips with the text because that’s what the two protagonists are trying to do and they takes us along with them.
You can read my full review on my blog here.
November 15, 2019
After years of intending to get into this series, I just finished reading "The Meat Tree", one of Seren Books' 10 volume "New Stories From the Mabinogion" - each written by a different author in a different style. This volume, by Gwyneth Lewis, is a retelling of the Fourth Branch set in outer space 200 years in the future. While it is a huge shift in setting, the narrative makes good use of ship's logs and VR technology as storytelling techniques. I thought the author brought some interesting insights into the characters, and she clearly did her homework with some of the subtextual themes of the original tale. It's worth a read, and there are some beautifully poetic moments, but those who are familiar with the story will get the most out of it, I think (although it does include a brief synopsis of the Fourth Branch in the back of the book).
February 24, 2012
I really loved this book. I first found out about the Blodeuwedd story when I was at school and we read the 'owl service' I fell in love with the story and bought a book of welsh myths immediately. About two weeks ago I went to see Gwyneth Lewis talking about some of her work and bought this book, until then I had no idea that the series had been written. I'm very glad I went and I'm very glad that I chose this book to read (my first book written by her) I will be reading more by Gwyneth Lewis and more of this series of books.
August 24, 2014
An ambitious and complex retelling of the Blodeuwedd myth - the woman of flowers from the Mabinogion - set on a spaceship and with the rules of virtual reality taking the place of myth. The main problem I had with the book was the complexity of the underlying myth, which I didn't know prior to reading this. As the book does so much with the myth in addition to its basic elements it gets pretty mind-boggling. But the lyrical elements are beautiful and the sci fi complications do add up to a worthwhile reflection on the nature of identity and imagination, including its destructive potential.
May 17, 2012
Not over keen on science fiction- I prefer the Mabinogion. This story is derivative, contrived and I think, self-conscious.
September 25, 2016
This one is just weird, makes me want to read more about Welsh myths.
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