What a glorious, if unusual, novel this is. Cuddy‘s structure is highly unusual, the main character is a saint, dead for more than 1300 years, and there is sheer magic in the author’s love letter to his home city of Durham, in North England.
Cuddy is the nickname given to St Cuthbert, who lived in the 7th Century. He was a monk, bishop and hermit, who ended his days in the year of 687 on tiny Inner Farne Island, close to Lindisfarne, often called the Holy Island, in Northumberland.
Many years later, with Vikings posing an invasion threat to the region, devoted monks fled with his coffin, carrying it around the north of England for decades, until they came to rest in an area where Durham Cathedral was built to house the saint’s remains and relics.
Myers grew up close to that cathedral, and for his novel chose five different settings and times for his stories, starting in 995 with a young woman travelling with the monks as they carry Cuddy around the north of England. A foundling the monks adopted on their travels, she talks with Cuddy about his life and death and has a vision of a vast cathedral on a hill. That whole section is written in verse. In between what he terms the ‘books,’ Myers has pages of quotes from the many people who have written about St Cuthbert, tracing his life and death.
The second account, set in 1346, features the abused wife of an archer, making ale for the stonemasons working on the cathedral in the town called Duresme. An interlude is the most deeply moving section of this novel, set in 1650, after Oliver Cromwell’s army had defeated the Scots at the Battle of Dunbar. With 3000 Scotsmen imprisoned in Durham Cathedral, this section is written as a play, with four young Scots waiting to die, and the Cathedral featured as one of the cast.
Moving on to 1827, we read the diary of an Oxford professor asked to witness the opening of Cuddy’s coffin to see if the legend of his remains being uncorrupted is just a myth.
And finally, a young labourer in 2019, with the surname Cuthbert, works in the cathedral while his mother lies dying at home.
Myers’ use of language is truly wonderful, he has used linking characters such as an owl-eyed young man in several accounts, and he has shone a superb light on the man known to northerners as Cuddy.
Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville
