Cuddy
The triumphant new novel from the Walter Scott Prize-winning author of The Gallows Pole and The Offing
Cuddy is a bold and experimental retelling of the story of the hermit St. Cuthbert, unofficial patron saint of the North of England.
Incorporating poetry, prose, play, diary and real historical accounts to create a novel like no other, Cuddy straddles historical eras - from the first Christian-slaying Viking invaders of the holy island of Lindisfarne in the 8th century to a contemporary England defined by class and austerity.
Along the way we meet brewers and masons, archers and academics, monks and labourers, their visionary voices and stories echoing through their ancestors and down the ages.
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.
Review It's been a while since I've reacted as emotionally to a novel ... An epic the north has long deserved: ambitious, dreamy, earthy, dark, welcoming and not ... There are readers like me who will not just enjoy this book but feel deeply grateful for its existence ― FINANCIAL TIMES
A millennium-spanning polyphonic flight through history ... Myers creates characters and voices so absorbing that when the timeline jumps forward you are reluctant to leave them, only for the next protagonist to become the centre of your world until it is time to move on again. A phenomenal achievement, Cuddy is by some distance my novel of 2023 ― NEW EUROPEAN
A visionary epic which covers a millennium of English history and employs poetry and prose, playscript and pastiche to trace the story of St Cuthbert, the building of Durham Cathedral and the contemporary northern landscape ― GUARDIAN, Best books of the year
This bold, experimental novel, which uses poetry as much as prose, won this year's Goldsmiths prize ― THE TIMES, Books of the Year
A polyphonic hymn to a very specific landscape and its people. At the same time, it deepens his standing as an arresting chronicler of a broader, more mysterious seam of ancient folklore that unites the history of these isles as it's rarely taught ― OBSERVER
A visionary epic which covers a millennium of English history and employs poetry and prose, playscript and pastiche to trace the story of St Cuthbert, the building of Durham Cathedral and the contemporary northern landscape. ― GUARDIAN, Books of the Year 2023
A genre-blending, millennia-straddling history ... A bold story about faith and nationhood that upends preconceptions of the ''historical novel" ― NEW STATESMAN, Books of the Year
Myers' playful, form- and genre-bending tale about St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne ... The author is known for his grasp of language and elegiac take on history and the natural world - all of which are put to excellent use in a novel that spans poetry, prose, historical accounts and more ― MARIE CLAIRE, The best books of 2023
A dizzyingly inventive retelling of St Cuthbert's life ― TELEGRAPH, Books of the Year
Myers is maturing into a serious writer rather than just a sombre one. Cuddy is an ambitious and accomplished novel that shows it's not - necessarily - grim up north ― THE TIMES
A bold novel that whirls us through a dizzying range of poetic and prosaic styles ― Daily Telegraph, The 75 best books for summer 2023
About the Author Benjamin Myers was born in Durham in 1976. He is the author of ten books, including The Offing, which was an international bestseller and selected for the Radio 2 Book Club; The Gallows Pole, which won the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction and has been adapted as a BBC series by Shane Meadows; Beastings which was awarded the Portico Prize for Literature, and Pig Iron which won the inaugural Gordon Burn Prize. He has also published non-fiction, poetry and crime novels and his journalism has appeared in publications including the Guardian, New Statesman, TLS, Caught by the River and many more. He lives in the Upper Calder Valley, West Yorkshire.
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