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Review: The Book of I, by David Grieg

Kristen Hall-Geisler

• 4 min read
Review: The Book of I, by David Grieg

I'm going to be honest with you, readers: This is a quick little book review because it was drafted as a pitch to review outlets. No one picked it up, which is fine. That's how pitching works. But then the ebook advance reader copy that I got so I could review the book expired, and the novel was whisked off my ereader. I really should have gotten around to writing this sooner; the fault is mine.

But I did really like The Book of I by David Grieg. It's set in the far north of England during the Middle Ages, which is a longtime interest of mine. These are the years when the Vikings were viking, and they come for this abbey. There is a slaughter (c.f.: Vikings), but young Martin survives, and a raider named Grimur is left behind on the island.

About halfway through the novel, Grieg shares with the reader, as Martin's former abbot had shared with him, how one might approach this novel, or the Bible, or almost anything worth reading:

Aed had taught Martin there were three different ways to understand scripture.
1. The Present meaning
2. The Hidden meaning
3. The mysteries

The present meaning, for Martin as for the reader if The Book of I, is “what the sentence appeared to mean on the surface.” On the surface, this is a juicy, funny, witty, charming tale, a narrative with a small cast and a circumscribed setting (Greig is a playwright; this is his first novel). It has a plot, and the characters change over the course of the story, and there are dangers and delights to be found. It’s easy to read and rewarding, and it comes in at fewer than 150 pages. Literature for the masses.

In the hidden meaning, as Aed instructed Martin, “Things also meant other things.” Here we are getting into more complex ideas like symbolism and motifs. It’s easy to read this book as a clash between God and Odin, or Christianity and paganism, in the persons of Martin the young monk and Grimur the middle-aged Viking. One wants to turn the other cheek, and the other wants to behead people.

The last of Aed's ways of reading requires that the reader to give themselves over to the text in order to be “granted a brief glimpse of the mysteries behind the words.” Here on this third level is where a delightful human tale and a consideration of religion becomes literature. The Book of I is a story of fate versus free will or destiny versus decisions. The characters all claim to be following God’s plan or the will of the weaving Fates, but every single character takes their lives—or their deaths, or both at the same time—into their own hands. When confronted by circumstances, every person in this book makes a choice rather than succumbing to fate, even when they say that choice was made in the name of fate, or faith.

Given that I wrote my master's thesis on a medieval guide for anchoresses and I'm currently shopping around a book proposal based on that thesis, I was glad to see an anchoress arrive midway through the story, which sounds odd since anchoresses were walled into cells at the sides of churches. She arrives early according to the history of anchorites, but right on time according to the narrative. Anchoresses were first recorded in the late ninth century in northern Europe, so a few decades after and at least several hundred miles away from the setting of this novel. English anchorites of any gender (men and women both took up this extreme form of Christian asceticism) are first recorded in the eleventh century and explode in number and across the country in the twelfth.

Greig tells the reader how to read his work on multiple levels, and this is a fun novel on any level of engagement. You could easily skim across its well-written and humorous surface and reach the final page satisfied. But diving deeper, then deeper still, like the whales and seals that populate this North Sea tale, brings up further treasures.

I don't usually do an "if you liked..." kind of recommendation, but there are other books in this vein that I also enjoyed. If you liked Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant or Ferdia Lennon’s Glorious Exploits, then The Book of I is an easy next read.

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KHG’s latest translations, Memoirs of a French Courtesan Volume 1: Rebellion, Volume 2: Spectacle, and Volume 3: Luck, are available now. Volume 4: Payback will be published January 27, 2026.