Cuddy: Winner of the 2023 Goldsmiths Prize

Reviews

lilysmum

☺️ It reminded me of Joyce’s Ulysses (yes, oh yes) and Shakespeare, and Ted Hughes, and Gawain, and oh, all sorts of lovely writers and poets.

Maybe surprisingly my favourite bits were the bits that knitted together myriad short quotations from other sources named in the vast bibliography to tell Cuthbert’s story in an incredibly intimate and realistic way, so I felt I really had a handle on what Cuthbert was really like. What links us to the past? What is faith?

I’m making it sound like this book is a bit dry, maybe. It thrums with life, and the way the various parts set in different time periods all fit together makes the reading a joyful experience. It’s part history, part novel, part poem, part drama, part diary, and each piece fits into the whole perfectly just like the stones that built Durham Cathedral.