Under the Rock: Stories Carved From the Land

by Benjamin Myers (Author), Benjamin Myers (Author)

New
Paperback
2019
$9.70

'A bone-tingling book' - Richard Benson; Carved from the land above Mytholmroyd in West Yorkshire, Scout Rock is a steep crag overlooking wooded slopes and weed-tangled plateaus. To many it is unremarkable; to others it is a doomed place where 18th-century thieves hid out, where the town tip once sat, and where suicides leapt to their deaths. Its brooding form presided over the early years of Ted Hughes, who called Scout Rock 'my spiritual midwife . . . both the curtain and backdrop to existence'.; Into this beautiful, dark and complex landscape steps Benjamin Myers, asking: are unremarkable places made remarkable by the minds that map them? Seeking a new life and finding solace in nature's power of renewal, Myers excavates stories both human and elemental. The result is a lyrical and unflinching investigation into nature, literature, history, memory and the meaning of place in modern Britain.; UNDER THE ROCK is about badgers, balsam, history, nettles, mythology, moorlands, mosses, poetry, bats, wild swimming, slugs, recession, floods, logging, peacocks, community, apples, asbestos, quarries, geology, industrial music, owls, stone walls, farming, anxiety, relocation, the North, woodpiles, folklore, landslides, ruins, terriers, woodlands, ravens, dales, valleys, walking, animal skulls, trespassing, crows, factories, maps, rain - lots of rain - and a great big rock.

Synopsis

'A bone-tingling book' - Richard Benson; Carved from the land above Mytholmroyd in West Yorkshire, Scout Rock is a steep crag overlooking wooded slopes and weed-tangled plateaus. To many it is unremarkable; to others it is a doomed place where 18th-century thieves hid out, where the town tip once sat, and where suicides leapt to their deaths. Its brooding form presided over the early years of Ted Hughes, who called Scout Rock 'my spiritual midwife . . . both the curtain and backdrop to existence'.; Into this beautiful, dark and complex landscape steps Benjamin Myers, asking: are unremarkable places made remarkable by the minds that map them? Seeking a new life and finding solace in nature's power of renewal, Myers excavates stories both human and elemental. The result is a lyrical and unflinching investigation into nature, literature, history, memory and the meaning of place in modern Britain.; UNDER THE ROCK is about badgers, balsam, history, nettles, mythology, moorlands, mosses, poetry, bats, wild swimming, slugs, recession, floods, logging, peacocks, community, apples, asbestos, quarries, geology, industrial music, owls, stone walls, farming, anxiety, relocation, the North, woodpiles, folklore, landslides, ruins, terriers, woodlands, ravens, dales, valleys, walking, animal skulls, trespassing, crows, factories, maps, rain - lots of rain - and a great big rock.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 384
Edition: 2
Publisher: Elliott & Thompson Ltd
Published: 25 Apr 2019
ISBN 10: 1783964367
ISBN 13: 9781783964369
Book Overview: * Benjamin Myers is an award-winning novelist with a major cult following who hit the mainstream in 2018 when he won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction for his novel The Gallows Pole.; * Ben's profile is growing rapidly, including several appearances on BBC 6 Music, with The Gallows Pole being selected for the first Slow Readers Book Club on the station.; * His work has been widely praised by nature writers including Robert MacFarlane, Amy Liptrot and Rob Cowen.; * This is a spellbinding contribution to the literature of landscape and place from a writer at the peak of his powers.

Media Reviews

A bone-tingling book' -- Richard Benson, author of The Valley and The Farm; Extraordinary, elemental ... never less than compelling: this is a wild, dark grimoire of a book - The Times Literary Supplement; 'The writing is perfectly poised and seductive, luminous, an earthy immersion into the granular dark of place. The prose has an intense, porous quality, inhabiting the reader right from the stunning start with the voices of rock, earth, wood and water. This is a truly elemental read from which I emerged subtly changed. The writing has a shamanic quality; Benjamin Myers is a writer of exceptional talent and originality ... it has all the makings of a classic' -- Miriam Darlington, author of Otter Country and Owl Sense; Compelling ... admirable and engrossing. Myers writes of the rain with a poet's eye worthy of Hughes - Erica Wagner, New Statesman; 'One of the many joys of Under the Rock - this absorbing, compelling, moving book - is its language; it trickles like a rivulet, thunders like a cataract, and sticks to you like mud. It is full of crannies and dips and peaks wherein wonders hide; explore it for a lifetime and you will not exhaust its mysteries. Unafraid of blood-drenched history and the darkest of despair, this is nonetheless a defiantly life-praising book; it accompanied me to bed and bar, train and plane, and each situation was enriched and brightened by its presence... . It is utterly vital' -- Niall Griffiths, author of Grits, Sheepshagger and Stump; 'Richly layered, densely and elegantly structured, discursive, elegiac and beautiful. Under the Rock is a stunning exploration of place, mind and myth' -- Jenn Ashworth, author of Fell and The Friday Gospels; Prodigious, awe-incurring ... few are as impressive as the formidable Benjamin Myers, who has developed a voice as pure and authentic as it is stark, honest and resolutely northern ... creates an overall sense of dreamy, quiet beauty, born of love for the lie of the land. - The Big Issue; Compelling ... an atmospheric exploration of the landscape and its history - Irish Times; A visionary work of immense power and subtlety which establishes Myers as one of Britain's most consistently interesting and gifted writers - Morning Star; 'Place-writing at its most supple: both deeply considered, and deeply felt' -- Melissa Harrison, author of Rain: Four Walks in English Weather; Best known for his bleak and brilliant crime fiction Myers turns his focus to nature writing with absorbing results in this lyrical exploration of Scout Rock in Yorkshire's Calder Valley - i-news, Best Books to Take on Holiday 2018; Exceptionally engaging ... beguiling ... this is a startling, unclassifiable book - Stuart Kelly, The Scotsman; Thoughtful, engaging and beautifully crafted ... the writing is lyrical yet muscular and elemental, transporting the reader to this plaece of rugged beauty and dark secrets - The Yorkshire Post; [A] beautifully poetic, passionate and elegiac book ... Myers' writing left me with a heart-wrenching desire to be there - Harry Gallon, Minor Literatures; 'What distinguishes Under the Rock is Myers' unshakeable commitment. He writes at all times with rock-solid conviction, fashioning a book which is less a work of simple description than a new contribution to the mythology of Elmet' -- Will Ashon, author of Strange Labyrinth, Clear Water and The Heritage; 'I have become a Benjamin Myers junkie in the last 12 months . . . Myers' place-writing is as good as anything being scrawled in Britain today' - Horatio Clare, author of Down to the Sea in Ships and Orison for a Curlew; Terrific... It's a book which doesn't just discuss or describe landscape, but immerses you within it... if this doesn't put Ben Myers on everyone's radar then I don't know what will - Daniel Carpenter, Bookmunch; An author to adopt as your own, a book to turn others on to ... boy does it rock - Cally Callomon, Caught by the River; A daring new work ... make[s] the unremarkable truly remarkable. It's a work that is focused on landscape and place and is another step on this special writer cementing himself as more than just a cult favourite - Narc Magazine; An extraordinary blend of power, poetry and grit ... Benjamin Myers has made his rock sing - Richard Littledale, The Preacher's Blog; Myers' prose is outstanding - Marcel Krueger, Hong Kong Review of Books; Praise for The Gallows Pole:; 'Fierce, gale-driven prose that speaks to and of the northern English landscape . . . much admiration' -- Robert Macfarlane, author of Landmarks and The Lost Words; 'Terrific: illuminating, gripping and deeply rooted in its setting' -- Amy Liptrot, author of The Outrun; 'Myers is the master of English rural noir' -- Paul Kingsnorth, author of The Wake and Beast; 'Starkly beautiful prose' - Alex Preston, the Guardian; Under the Rock is the most beautifully written non-fiction book... There is an extremely powerful sense of place. I was fully immersed in the landscape, the water, the woods, the rock. Lyrical, powerful, engaging, moving and fascinating. Highly recommended - The Book Corner, Halifax

Author Bio

Benjamin Myers is an author, journalist and poet. His novels include The Gallows Pole (2017), which won the 2018 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, and also received the Roger Deakin Award; Turning Blue (2016); Beastings (2014) which won the Portico Prize For Literature and the Northern Writers' Award, was longlisted for a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Award 2015 and chosen by Robert Macfarlane as one of his books of 2014; Pig Iron (2012), which won the inaugural Gordon Burn Prize and was runner-up in The Guardian's Not The Booker Prize; and Richard (2010), a Sunday Times book of the year. His journalism regularly appears in The Guardian, New Statesman, Mojo, Caught By The River, New Scientist and others. He lives in the Upper Calder Valley, West Yorkshire.