Cuddy

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Book four, an account from a visiting professor in 1827, who has no love of the uncultured north. He is there for the opening of Cuthbert’s tomb once more. This time the decorative casket that has held the saint’s body for eight hundred years is ruined. Myers has written this in the flamboyant wordy style of the period, catching the nuances effortlessly.

Cuddy is a book told through four connected novels, plus an interlude, at different key moments throughout the history of Durham Cathedral and its founding as a home for the relics of St Cuthbert. (Although the choice of 1827 for one part also allows an implicit dig at Liz Truss!) Another high point for me was the use early on of multiple excerpts from other writers writing about St Cuthbert ,these feel like a cacophony of voices like the chatter of the Ancestors ,almost another character themselvesAnd the way that certain characters (eg an owl-eyed boy) and certain motifs (eg wild garlic) echo through the ages makes the sum greater than its sometimes flawed parts. BENJAMIN: Writing is fun. When I do it, I feel free. Not always, but often. I get to be king of my own kingdom, or at least until the doorbell goes and there’s a parcel to be retrieved from the hedge, or my faithful hound is letting me know that he needs emptying. But inspiration comes from the love of the form, really: if you want to write, ideas will hopefully come. And if they don’t, just log-on to BBC news, buy your local paper or go and sit in a library for a morning: they’re full of endless stories, or at least the seeds of ideas. Myers, Benjamin (2019). Beastings. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. ISBN 978-1-5266-1122-2. OCLC 1111949459. And all the while at the centre sits Durham Cathedral and the lives of those who live and work around this place of pilgrimage - their dreams, desires, connections and communities. The other five shortlisted books were Lori & Joe by Amy Arnold, The Long Form by Kate Briggs, Never Was by H Gareth Gavin, Man-Eating Typewriter by Richard Milward and The Future Future by Adam Thirlwell.

All in all a fabulous book one I would hope would appear on prize lists such as the Booker prize .The book defiantly classes as a literary novel Cuddyis a bold and experimental retelling of the story of the hermit St. Cuthbert, unofficial patron saint of the North of England. Cuddy, his eighth novel, combines poetry, prose, play, diary and real historical accounts of the story and legacy of St. Cuthbert and his connection to Durham Cathedral. [20] [21] Honours [ edit ]Cuddy is an absolute masterpiece in my opinion. I am, admittedly, a Benjamin Myers fan and have read nearly every book he's published so far. So I was excited to see this come out so soon after The Perfect Golden Circle. History comes alive in here, he thinks, and the centuries overlap. The voices of the dead live on, they still speak today.

Although the later sections (a second-person account of the construction of Durham Cathedral, a Murder in the Cathedral-type play set in the 1650s, the excavation of his remains in the 1820s, a young man and potential descendant in 2019 Durham named Michael Cuthbert) feel pretty pretentious and less than essential, it's neat that a similar female character (Edith or Edie in later sections) recurs. Then we skip forwards in three-hundred-year bounds, to the time the masons are constructing the final great gothic cathedral, then to a short play, with the cathedral itself as narrator. As the Civil War rages, the great building has become a prison for captured Scottish soldiers. It is not until 2013, when a new café is being constructed, that their mass grave will be discovered. Portico Prize For Literature. Gordon Burn Prize. Roger Deakin Award. Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. Goldsmiths Prize. The writing is so beautiful even when some of it makes little sense. As you read you initially feel impressions of the story rather than discerning any plot but as the parts move on the stories become more concrete. After finding some of the earlier parts a bit hard to fully engage with I eventually fell into the story completely and couldn’t stop reading.

This will be incredibly difficult for me to review. My admiration of Benjamin Myers' work is well known, and I think with Cuddy- because it is extremely experimental in style and approach- he has positioned himself more than ever before to be in the running for a longlist nomination on this year's Booker Prize. I found the poetry of Thomas Hardy to be dismal and the prose of DH Lawrence to be overwrought – all those exclamation marks. Expressing this was probably the reason I failed A-level English. But I now recognise both as visionaries who saw far beyond the England they occupied. I particularly admire Lawrence’s novellas, The Fox and The Virgin and the Gypsy. I just adore discovering a book that is so perfect that I keep stopping to enjoy perfectly composed sentences .This is why I read so much .I read lots and lots of 4 star really good books but for me the joy is finding the 5 star ones .Cuddy is one of these books it is a perfectly crafted beautifully poetic book of loveliness .