Benjamin Myers (3) (1976–)

This is the story of Robert, the sixteen year old son of a Durham coal miner, on the cusp of adulthood, as he foot-slogs slowly southwards just after the Second World War. His simple hand-to-mouth existence changes when he meets Dulcie, who's older, eccentric, from a very different world, and who opens her home to him. This story, which starts so simply yet poetically, continues as a slow burn, but one which ends with both characters' lives being changed irrevocably. Here you will find an involving tale, lyrically told, by an author who's immersed in the sights, scents and images of the northern countryside he knows and loves, and who paints his characters well.… (more)

It's not often that I come to the closing pages of a book, vowing to read it again soon, knowing that I have not - could not - squeeze all that it has to offer out of a single reading. I know little about Saint Cuthbert beyond the fact that he was a simple man, much venerated in his own time. Which explains why a motley band of monks and devotees intermittently spent years moving his remains around to save him from the depredations of Viking raiders. And we meet some of them here, in the first section of the book set in 995CE, where orphaned Ediva, in her breathless disjointed but poetic prose recounts their journey, the landscape, and her vision for his final resting place. Book two was the one I found the trickiest voice . In 1346, masons are enhancing and repairing the mighty hilltop cathedral (Durham). The wife of one meets and succumbs to another .... Then we leap to the 19th century to meet the opinionated and cocksure Forbes Fawcett-Black who has been invited to join the team exhuming the saint to see if the legend that his flesh is incorruptible is true. And finally we are in 2019, where a young under-educated man who cares for his dying mother is employed as a gopher to the current restoration team. His eyes are opened to a world and a heritage he had not known about. How different and yet how connected the sections are to each other. The language of each couldn't be more different one from the other: free-flowing yet poetic; dense blocks of prose; a pastiche Victorian ghost story; a rich narrative in which sense of place and societal deprivation are juxtaposed The kinds of story told are utterly different. Yet links are there - there's always an owl-eyed lad in the narrative, for instance. A richly complex feast of prose and poetry, inviting thought and discussion long after the last page has been turned.… (more)