Cuddy

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The book itself is divided into different historical sections, all centring around St. Cuthbert. The first focuses on the monks who carried St. Cuthbert’s coffin to Durham, the narrator is a girl who has visions and is able to talk to the saint directly, in which we get glimpses of his life. It’s worth noting that this section is told as an experimental poem. 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. Ostensibly the story of St. Cuthbert and his influence on the Christian faith over the last 1400 years, this is a deeply philosophical novel. Myers explores several topics, many of them quite obvious: the difference between faith and religion, the cost of true devotion, and the interplay between Art and Science. Beneath the surface, however, there is so much more happening. The judging panel for 2023 was made up of authors Helen Oyeyemi and Maddie Mortimer, the New Statesman’s Ellen Peirson-Hagger, and lecturer in creative writing atGoldsmiths, Tom Lee.

As Michael comes to realise, he too is part of never-ending history, ‘one more link in a chain of people … a continuum’ Chosen as a book to watch out for in 2023 by The Times, Observer, Guardian, Irish TImes and Scotsman**

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Benjamin Myers wins Gordon Burn Prize". Newwritingnorth.com. Archived from the original on 3 February 2014 . Retrieved 12 August 2014. Myers’s prose and verse are arresting, if sometimes rather pretentious. He speaks powerfully about a well-loved northern figure. But the real Cuthbert can best be found in the anonymous biography written on Lindisfarne just after the first relocation of his much travelled bones. 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 In this first story we meet the young cook who is part of the haliwerfolk, feeding the monks with whatever can be found and also tending to their ailments – their aches and pains and even their tooth aches. This is a poem that she utters and which I though is excellent.

Recipient of the Roger Deakin Award and first published by Bluemoose Books, Myers' novel The Gallows Pole was published to acclaim in 2017 and was winner of the Walter Scott Prize 2018 - the Benjamin Myers was born in Durham, UK, in 1976. Cuthbert is a central character linking the stories. But so is the cathedral. So much so that in one short section that is presented to us as a play, the cathedral has a speaking part. A dead person and an inanimate building are the central pillars around which the story flows. And, to a large extent, what we read is the history of the cathedral as it is built, corrupted, invaded and restored. And this story is told via a number of excellent and memorable supporting characters. As the book moves from 687 to 2019 in centuries-long leaps, there are less obvious themes which run throughout. Where does one find inspiration, and why are some sources more powerful than others? Is the distance between the sacred and the profane really so great? When is historical inquiry illuminating, and are there times one should simply "let his story lie" undisturbed? Myers is particularly fascinated by the journey of self-discovery that is the birthright of each person. And his personal love for the natural world allows for some truly vivid scene-setting. But through all the changes the one voice that never leaves is that of the saintly Cuthbert who never quite seems to get his wish to be left alone to worship God. 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 themselvesThis 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.

The Quietus | Features | Baker's Dozen | The Hills Are Alive With The Sound Of Music: Benjamin Myers' Favourite Music". The Quietus . Retrieved 24 March 2023. Myers, Benjamin (2005). Green Day: American idiots & the new punk explosion. Church Stretton: Independent Music Press. ISBN 0-9539942-9-5. OCLC 64553821. Myers, Benjamin (2006). System of a Down: right here in Hollywood. Church Stretton: Independent Music. ISBN 978-0-9549704-6-8. OCLC 63136435.The Gallows Pole - Watch the trailer for Shane Meadows' new drama". www.bbc.co.uk. 19 May 2023. Archived from the original on 31 May 2023 . Retrieved 31 May 2023. Jordison, Sam (15 October 2012). "Not the Booker prize: The winner | Books". The Guardian. theguardian.com . Retrieved 12 August 2014. Myers, Benjamin (2019). Beastings. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. ISBN 978-1-5266-1122-2. OCLC 1111949459. Benjaminwill appear at the Cambridge Literary Festival, in conversation with Goldsmiths Prize judgeMaddie Mortimerwhose first novelMaps of Our Spectacular Bodieswas shortlisted for the 2022 Goldsmiths Prize and won the Desmond Elliott Prize, andTom Gatti executive editor at theNew Statesman. The first part of the novel, Saint Cuddy, is told in the voice of Ediva, an orphan taken in by the monks as a child, now travelling with them as healer, cook and helper as they search for a final resting place for Cuddy’s coffin. Ediva is alive to the rhythms of the landscape in a way that marks her out as different; she also sees visions of the future cathedral – a building “bigger than anything man has ever built, so big it rears up like a mountain, like a great beast” – where the saint will finally be laid to rest.

Cuthbert of Lindisfarne (St. Cuthbert) is a central character in the book. Which sounds strange when you realise that the book starts on a small island near Lindisfarne with Cuthbert’s death (AD687). This is prose poetry which is the first of several literary forms used through the book (watch out also for stories told through quotes from text books, plays in which a building is a character, a Victorian journal/diary and Myers’ intense prose). 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.Writing Durham: Ben Myers. 7 August 2019. Archived from the original on 22 December 2021 . Retrieved 7 August 2019. Portico Prize For Literature. Gordon Burn Prize. Roger Deakin Award. Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. Goldsmiths Prize. Anderson, Hephzibah (19 March 2023). "Cuddy by Benjamin Myers review – a polyphonic hymn to the north-east". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712 . Retrieved 24 March 2023.