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Cuddy: Winner of the 2023 Goldsmiths Prize

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If you're feeling anxious, tell yourself to be excited instead of telling yourself to calm down. It's easier for your brain to transition from anxiety to excitement rather than calm. 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. 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. Previous winners include Eimear McBride, Isabel Waidner and Ali Smith. In 2022, Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams became the first collaborative authors to win the prize with their novel Diego Garcia.

Cuddy is an absolute masterpiece in my opinion. I am, admittedly, a Benjamin Myers fan and have read nearly every book he's published so far. So I was excited to see this come out so soon after The Perfect Golden Circle. History comes alive in here, he thinks, and the centuries overlap. The voices of the dead live on, they still speak today. Much like a runner who wins a race and extends her arms in V shape, that same action results in a more powerful mental state going into a conflict and helping to make better decisions or give a better speech or a host of other things that you may find challenging. The key position is called the "starfish up," as that is the position with your hand over your head. Breathing techniques and exercise are also key activities that one can do to get ready to be your best self.

The triumphant new novel from the Walter Scott Prize-winning author of The Gallows Pole and The Offing Several more sections follow in which we follow a young girl with her visions of a cathedral and her visitations from Cuthbert (AD995); we live in the shadow of that cathedral (Durham cathedral as we know it) with a woman (AD1346) whose husband is a famous archer but is also abusive and she falls for another, more gentle, man; we read the journal of an Oxford antiquarian (AD1827) as he travels to the north of England (which he despises) to witness the disinterment of a body in the cathedral; and we follow Michael Cuthbert in AD2019 as he cares for his mother and scratches a living as a labourer, eventually finding more stable work at the cathedral. Book II tells of masons repairing the cathedral stonework in 1346 and makes the saint an actor in condemning an abusive husband. The third book offers a pastiche of an M. R. James ghost story, set in 1827, when a sceptical professor finds his confidence in science challenged at the opening of the saint’s tomb. And, in the final part, a young labourer, Michael Cuthbert, has his own encounter with the numinous when unexpectedly given work in the cathedral while his mother lies dying at home.

Average head weighs 5.4kg, head tilted forward to use phone (60°) has effective weight of 27.2kg. Plus it contorts us into a powerless hunched pose. The final book is the story of Michael, a teenager labourer who in 2017 begins work at the cathedral among the repairs to the medieval masonry. This is Myers at his most modern and antagonistic. Take this short description of Durham’s early morning bus station, rank with the detritus of the night before: Preparation is not about having a memorised script, it's about having easier cognitive access to this content, which frees you to focus on what's actually happening.

Church Times/RSCM:

Hold something in your hands or place them on the table/arm rests to avoid clasping or wringing your hands

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