276°
Posted 20 hours ago

Cuddy: Winner of the 2023 Goldsmiths Prize

£10£20.00Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

I think this is the reaction many readers will have, as every different style Myers uses is going to appeal to different people. It was less about Cuddy than about the people surrounding his memory and the place embodying it, and it grew increasingly distant from the initial historical pull as it got closer to the present. I loved what Myers was trying to do here and show how history gets warped and changed by us and our stories over the years. 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. Women’s voices are at the forefront in the first two books, the last two focus on men who don’t have faith.

There is indeed poetry, prose, the occasional epistle, dramatic dialogue and bibliographical references woven into it stretching from Bede to modern times (Schama).Powerful and moving ― LITERARY REVIEW --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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. It is not until 2013, when a new café is being constructed, that their mass grave will be discovered.Myers is particularly fascinated by the journey of self-discovery that is the birthright of each person. I enjoyed Myers poetic prose and sometimes I felt the story was so believable that I could have been reading non fiction. 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.

I bought this on a whim after having visited Lindisfarne, Cuddy’s Cave, and Durham for the first time this year and it was so fun to explore the story of Cuthbert through the ages. In some ways, what stood out for me apart from the quality of the writing was the gentle exploration of faith and intimations of the possibility of the divine.

Section 1, a kind of epic poem telling the story of the Haliwerfolc, a group of dedicated monks and others who carried Cuddy's body around the north to help it avoid desecration by the invading vikings, is glorious. This is always near impossible to pull off and, while I admire the ambition, I feel like it could have been pared back a little. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

The fact that I had visited many of the Northumberland settings, including Durham and Lindisfarne, in 2021, gave me a greater than average interest in this book, but I doubt many readers, other than those with a local connection, will have staying power. I found it a little hard to get going with reading this as the mix of styles and forms used to move through the vast period of history covered in this retelling of the story and legacy of Saint Cuthbert from Lindisfarne to Dunhelm and Durham of today, was challenging- the last section is largely contemporary and very touching, and caused me to go back and re-read the earlier sections, and realise what an amazing success this book is - intentionally fitting form to content over the centuries. If all of this sounds too heady or terribly uninteresting, there is good news: The five narratives which contribute to the book's overarching story are excellent.It was particularly satisfying that the main POV character is a female disciple named Ediva, a foundling who had visions, including of the church where Cuthbert would finally be buried after centuries of nomadism. Myers characterisation is excellent and the stories overlap, interlink and echo off each other through the years. This place must have been built by brilliant minds and fuelled by a faith in something bigger, a form of faith that he now wishes he too might experience.

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment