Cuddy

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Past winners of the Tom-Gallon Trust Award". Society of Authors. 8 May 2020. Archived from the original on 6 August 2020 . Retrieved 27 May 2021. 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. I have not read any books by Baenjamin Myers before but so I approached this novel cautiously particularly as its main plot was about St Cuthbert and how he reached his final resting place in Durham Cathedral. Wow - what an extraordinary book, and I'm not just talking about the interesting device that the author uses to spin his yarn. The final book is the story of Michael, a teenager labourer who in 2017 begins work at the cathedral among the repairs to the medieval masonry. This is Myers at his most modern and antagonistic. Take this short description of Durham’s early morning bus station, rank with the detritus of the night before:

I want to ask you what’s next but I also don’t want to, as with Ben Myers the surprise is part of the joy of reading. So, if not what’s next, perhaps what’s the book you’d write if there were no limits? The one that makes you think, “Could I?”.As a journalist he has written about the arts and nature for publications including New Statesman, The Guardian, The Spectator, NME, Mojo, Time Out, New Scientist, Caught By The River, The Morning Star, Vice, The Quietus, Melody Maker and numerous others. The problem is, when a book starts with such an extraordinary beginning, it's very easy for the other sections of the book to pale in comparison. And that is sadly what happened. Don't get me wrong, there are no bad sections, but nothing was ever as good as that first part.

Myers, Benjamin (2019). The gallows pole. London. ISBN 978-1-5266-1115-4. OCLC 1102319901. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher ( link)Myers characterisation is excellent and the stories overlap, interlink and echo off each other through the years. Several more sections follow in which we follow a young girl with her visions of a cathedral and her visitations from Cuthbert (AD995); we live in the shadow of that cathedral (Durham cathedral as we know it) with a woman (AD1346) whose husband is a famous archer but is also abusive and she falls for another, more gentle, man; we read the journal of an Oxford antiquarian (AD1827) as he travels to the north of England (which he despises) to witness the disinterment of a body in the cathedral; and we follow Michael Cuthbert in AD2019 as he cares for his mother and scratches a living as a labourer, eventually finding more stable work at the cathedral.

Jordison, Sam (15 October 2012). "Not the Booker prize: The winner | Books". The Guardian. theguardian.com . Retrieved 12 August 2014. So, overall, while I didn't like some parts, I always appreciated his trademark brilliant prose and, man, that first section is worth the cover price alone. You'd be right in being confused. I am still confused and I've finished it! But I can recognise that this is a step up from what Myers has written before, and that it will bring him to the attention of people who perhaps haven't read his work before.Myers, Benjamin (2016). Turning blue. Rainton Bridge. ISBN 978-1-911356-00-4. OCLC 945718656. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher ( link) Chosen as a book to watch out for in 2023 by The Times, Observer, Guardian, Irish TImes and Scotsman** 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.

There is a Prologue which is set at the time of the death of Cuthbert in 687. Book 1 moves to 995. Cuthbert’s remains have been moved several times to avoid Viking raiders and they are on the move again with a group of monks plus a few others on the lookout for a final resting place. Book 2 moves to 1346 and is set in and around the cathedral and its masons and tells the story of Eda and her violent husband who is an archer fighting the Scots. There is an interlude set in 1650 when Cromwell was fighting in Scotland. Following the Battle of Dunbar three thousand Scotsmen were imprisoned in the Cathedral, 1700 of them died. The interlude takes the form of a play with the Cathedral itself as one of the characters. Book 3 is set in 1827 when Cuthbert’s remains were disinterred and is basically a Victorian Ghost story in the tradition of M R James: the ghosts being previous characters. Book 4 is set in 2019 and concerns Michael a young labourer caring for his dying mother. A labouring job at the Cathedral leads to new horizons but the past is ever present. Women’s voices are at the forefront in the first two books, the last two focus on men who don’t have faith.Myers, Benjamin (2017). These darkening days. Tyne and Wear, England. ISBN 978-1-911356-02-8. OCLC 990643416. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher ( link) There's no doubt that Ben Myers is one of my favourite writers and I will read anything he writes. I'm always full of admiration for Ben and his ability to write something completely different every time. Graham Masterton on the Night Warriors Series “I have always been interested in the significance of dreams. What is our brain trying to tell us, as we sleep?” The stories we tell one another are all that shall remain when time dies and even the strongest sculpted stones crumble to sand."