Benjamin Myers Press Reviews
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 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
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
There’s much to enjoy in the novel’s linguistic beauty ... Cuddy explores the endurance of goodness and grace - SPECTATOR
A sensational piece of storytelling … The symbiosis of poetry and story, of knowledge and deep love, marks out Cuddy as a singular and significant achievement - GUARDIAN
Mesmerising, lyrical ... Stands in a genre of its own ... Serves as a reminder that we are but custodians of a world we inherited. Cuddy cements Myers’s standing as one of our finest, and most deftly imaginative, writers - I NEWS
Myers traces … the manifold threads of history to remarkable effect - IRISH TIMES
The cathedral is a wonder … in its elegance and grotesquery, its shimmering and its solidity, Myers captures it accurately. Indeed, that could be a description of his book - SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY
As a work of literature and as a tribute to a man and his region, it will endure - INDEPENDENT.CO.UK
Marvellous, artful, enchanted ... With power and pathos, this novel follows the cult of St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne from the 7th century to the present day - DAILY TELEGRAPH
Brave, bold and brilliantly alive, Cuddy calls forth the voices and the places of the north in a kaleidoscopic portrait through time. Myers at his best: dark, sharp, earthy and superbly funny. Cuddy isn’t a novel, it’s an invocation -- ROB COWEN, author of Common Ground
Spare, poetic, haunting, tenderly observed ... Myers is a natural storyteller ... [with] a poetic sensibility, and as a writer he enjoys the snap and crunch of words, and the way they can summon an atmosphere - PROSPECT
A wonder ... An accomplished and very moving novel - SCOTSMAN
Incorporates poetry, prose, play, diary and real historical accounts to create a novel like no other - NORTHERN LIFE
Myers employs competing voices and different literary styles to pull together an ephemeral yet somehow tangible narrative that is both sweeping in its history and arresting in its style - YORKSHIRE LIFE
Myers chisels a cohesive and engaging portrait of a place laden with history - TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
An absorbingly beautiful book ... There aren't many writers as attuned to the present state of this country and the history and landscape that made it as Myers, who succeeds repeatedly in harnessing time with compassion, kindness and a rare gift for finding the right voice for the right people in the right era - NEW EUROPEAN
Cuddy is a work of art. Ben Myers has pulled off a kind of magic trick ... Daring, expansive and deeply satisfying, Cuddy is a truly original piece of writing which weaves a special kind of magic. I was left completely spellbound. I loved every minute of this dazzling and deeply original novel -- CLOVER STROUD, author of The Red of My Blood
Once again Ben Myers has built another time machine in words and I thoroughly enjoyed being humped around early medieval northern England alongside St Cuthbert's holy corpse via centuries of fisticuffs and up Durham Cathedrals tower to a sensitive take on issues of our own time. Most of all I appreciated how Myers explores faith and belief without the usual eyeroll and cynicism of our excessively secular age – I feel St Cuthbert's monks and masons looking down through history with a certain sense of pride -- LUKE TURNER, author of Out of the Woods
Cuddy is another milestone marking Myers’ versatility as a writer - BUZZ
Rich, rewarding, dark and comic, Cuddy is, like that cathedral, a magnificent construction - BUZZMAG
To be able to move from the Dark Ages, to the Middle Ages, to the Victorian Era to Modern Times and so ably capture the zeitgeist of each is a rare feat of imagination -- GABRIELLE DRAKE
Praise for Benjamin Myers: A writer of extraordinary and incandescent talent -- ALEX PRESTON
A genre-melding experimental novel - GUARDIAN, Best Books of 2023
Here is a strong, spiritual writer who sees and loves every dewdrop, old oak, soft little animal and buried sword, and offers them up to us like the precious treasures they are - THE TIMES
No one writes about the atmosphere, beauty and brutality of the English countryside better than Benjamin Myers. And it's hard to think of many people who can write with such attentiveness, tenderness and force about the importance of human connection and the redemptive power of art -- WENDY ERSKINE
One of the most interesting, restless writers of his generation - DAILY MAIL
No one writes about the atmosphere, beauty and brutality of the English countryside better than Ben Myers. And it's hard to think of many people who can write with with such attentiveness, tenderness and force about the importance of human connection and the redemptive power of art -- WENDY ERSKINE
Shot through with a romantic, even mystical radicalism of the kind that William Blake would have approved of - DAILY TELEGRAPH
What a radical thing, these days, to have written a book so full of warmth and kindness ... Gorgeous -- MAX PORTER
Benjamin Myers is fast making the contested boundary between history and folklore his own -- JOHN MITCHINSON A powerful new voice - GUARDIAN
Book by book, over the past decade, Ben Myers has proved himself to be one of the most singular, moving and crucial voices of our times -- DAVID PEACE
A draft of cool, clear water ... He’s such a good and brave writer - MONOCLE
Benjamin Myers is fast making the contested boundary between history and folklore his own -- JOHN MITCHINSON
Powerful and moving - LITERARY REVIEW
