Byatt gives her version of the great end of the world battle of Norse mythology juxtaposed against a young English girl during the time of World War II. The girl and her mother have been relocated to the country while her pilot father is off fighting the Nazis. The girl, called only "the thin child," reads a copy of Asgard and the Gods and compares their situation to that of the war. She is convinced that her father will never return, having been killed in the war just as the gods, giants, and monsters were in the battle of Ragnarok. However, her father returns and she must change her worldview to become one of light again rather than the dark she had become used to both in life and in reading of Ragnarok.
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