Cuddy

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Pig Iron (2012) was set in the traveller/gypsy community of the north-east of England and was the first to be published under his full name Benjamin Myers. Published by Bluemoose Books, it won the inaugural Gordon Burn Prize [8] and was longlisted for 3:AM Magazine.com's 'Novels of the Year' [9] and runner-up in The Guardian's 'Not The Booker Prize', [10] in the same year. I have always been interested in the significance of dreams. What is our brain trying to tell us, as… 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?”

Myers grew up in Belmont, County Durham, [2] and was a pupil at the estate's local comprehensive school where he become interested in reading and skateboarding. [3] The Portico Prize For Literature. The Gordon Burn Prize. Roger Deakin Award. Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. This is the third work I have read by Benjamin Myers and again this one did not disappoint. It is poetry and prose, fact and fiction, passionate and discursive: a dash through over a thousand years of history. Cuddy is a shortened form of Cuthbert and refers to St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, a seventh century shepherd boy who became a monk and then prior of Melrose Abbey and finally a hermit on the island of Lindisfarne. This is an experimental novel using a variety of forms. There is indeed poetry, prose, the occasional epistle, dramatic dialogue and bibliographical references woven into it stretching from Bede to modern times (Schama). There are strands running through the book and the past haunts and informs the present. 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 world's largest prize for historical fiction. It has Benjamin Myers was born in Durham, UK, in 1976. 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.I knew nothing about St Cuthbert before reading the novel although I was vaguely aware of the Early Christian church and Lindesfarne..This book manages to be about his cult following but to encompass so much more .It touches on amongst other things belief ,on love .on family and on early Christian architecture.The novel moves through time concentrating on a collection of characters who share characteristics through time but are mostly living in the area around Durham Cathedral .We meet an owl eyed boy in modern times who appeared in early historical sections likewise an orphan girl who cooks and provides for our characters is seen accompanying the itinerant passage of St Curhbert’s bones and repeatedly through time until she appears in our own time working in the Durham cathedral tea shop .i loved the way these stories disappeared and returned ,the author is able to change their writing style to match the time period so there is modern story telling towards the end but gothic Victorian In the middle .So clever I really appreciated the intellectual experience of reading it .Having said that don’t let it put you off as it is an easy comfortable read throughout 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. Best Horror Movies Of All Time: 13 of the scariest horror films ever - per ranking and jump scare count The monastery on Lindisfarne in the 8th century would have been the height of modernity, in terms of how the monks lived, the comforts they were afforded, the theological and moral discussions that would have had. We’re probably only somewhere between fifty and a hundred generations away from that time, and Durham Cathedral is living proof that we were not living like primitives one thousand years ago: we had vision. We understood mathematics, engineering, and were bold thinkers. It wasn’t all scrofula, trebuchets and turnips for breakfast.

Tom-Gallon Trust Award | Society of Authors – Protecting the rights and furthering the interests of authors". Society of Authors. Archived from the original on 19 July 2014 . Retrieved 12 August 2014.

Tom-Gallon Trust Award 2014". Society of Authors. 8 May 2020. Archived from the original on 6 August 2020. Myers takes a different narrative approach in each of the five sections (four major parts and one short interlude) and in fact each part is a separate story that could almost be read independently. The thread is St Cuthbert (affectionately known as Cuddy) who was declared a saint in the North of England in the late 600’s. His coffin was taken from Lindisfarne by a group of monks after the Danes invaded. These monks then travelled around the country for years before they settled in what is now known as Durham and the majestic Durham Cathedral was built to inter his coffin. Diana Hendry The long journey from Lindisfarne: Cuddy, by Benjamin Myers, reviewed St Cuthbert’s body, rescued from the ‘devilish Danes’, is carried for hundreds of years to its eventual shrine in Durham cathedral The aforementioned AD1827 section provides comic relief in the form of a rather caricatured academic snob from The Other Place (although it neatly twists into an effective Victorian ghost story): 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.