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The Perfect Golden Circle: Selected for BBC 2 Between the Covers Book Club 2022

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Thanks for your question. I think that 6 hours is just barely enough time to visit all 5 spots in the guide. If you break it down – the driving time alone (starting and ending in Reykjavik) is going to be in the 3.5 hour range. That would leave you with around 2.5 hours for the 5 attractions plus a stop for lunch as well. If you are fine with just seeing each place for 30 minutes and moving on to the next then that can be done in 6 hours. However if you want more time to explore each place and not be rushed, somewhere closer to 7-8 hours would be best. The beauty of Myers' language alone is reward enough to read this superb novel, but The Perfect Golden Circle offers so much more: an all-too-rare literary depiction of rural England, the depths of the two central characters, the class and ecological concerns; but most of all the human need for what the Welsh poet Bobi Jones called the boundless mystery that comforts being. A truly remarkable novel -- RON RASH

The Perfect Golden Circle by Benjamin Myers | Waterstones

As a journalist he has written about the arts and nature for publications including New Statesman, The Guardian, The Spectator, NME, Mojo, Time Out, New Scientist, Caught By The River, The Morning Star, Vice, The Quietus, Melody Maker and numerous others.Great review Theresa, but that excerpt about the eclipse was wayyyy to descriptive for me, I probably wouldn’t like this one. Glad you loved it! Moving and exhilarating, tender and slyly witty, The Perfect Golden Circle is a captivating novel about the futility of war, the destruction of the English countryside, class inequality – and the power of beauty to heal trauma and fight power.

The Perfect Golden Circle by Benjamin Myers review

Benjamin Myers is fast making the contested boundary between history and folklore his own. The ballad of Redbone and Calvert somehow combines the ease and warmth of T he Offing with the sinew and menace of The Gallows Pole -- JOHN MITCHINSONThe messages Benjamin Myers imparts center around the environment, friendship, and the healing power of art. The novel is a snapshot of Britain during a moment of change: the ending of the Thatcher regime, its social unrest, crippling unemployment and the fading of the British Empire. It is also a fond homage to an imperiled rural idyll in its final moments before giving way to a hyper-connected globalism. Themes of British colonisation weigh heavily throughout the narrative, informed mostly by Calvert’s experiences of fighting in the Falklands war. I found this interesting within a contemporary novel, the exploration of colonialism, that is. Hand in hand with this is Calvert’s feelings against war and his disdain for the British aristocracy. Woven together, it makes for a powerful sentiment encapsulated within a poetically beautiful novel about fighting trauma and power in the most imaginative of ways. Ich kam nicht mit den Protagonisten zurecht, der Sinn hinter allem erschloss sich mir auch nicht und die leisen Töne, die ich sonst so liebe, waren selbst mir zu fad. Under cover of darkness, they traverse the fields of rural England in secret, forming crop circles in elaborate and mysterious patterns, painstakingly avoiding damaging the wheat to yield designs so intricate that their overnight appearances inspire awe amongst a mystified public.

The Perfect Golden Circle - Bloomsbury Publishing The Perfect Golden Circle - Bloomsbury Publishing

Benjamin Myers uses the efforts of the real-life Bower and Chorley as the jumping-off point for his latest novel…[it]has much to say about art, but it also has an allegorical feel.” — The Star Tribune The novel begins portentously. The narrative invokes wolves stalking shrinking copses and fields that are full of bones, “rotting deep in the rich soil of a singular cemetery called England”. Throughout, there are echoes of David Peace, Gordon Burn, Stephen Barber – writers who render the recent past as occulture, hallucinatory. There are also spectres of other more politically fraught fields from the 80s: Goose Green, Orgreave, the Battle of the Beanfield near Stonehenge. The Perfect Golden Circle is a triumph of a book, showcasing a writer at his very best. There is a huge heart beating in this magical story. A heartfelt story that is transformative and transportive ... Moving and exhilarating, tender and slyly witty, The Perfect Golden Circle is a captivating novel about the futility of war, the destruction of the English countryside, class inequality - and the power of beauty to heal trauma and fight power * STORGY * The RRP is the suggested or Recommended Retail Price of a product, set by the publisher or manufacturer.

Reviews

For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. The Perfect Golden Circle is the perfect short story. That's precisely how it landed with me—a captured moment in time, an excerpt from a much longer narrative of these central characters, how they came together, what would happen to as their lives rolled along... and yet it is a novel, if only because its length shelves it as such. England, 1989. Over the course of a burning hot summer, two very different men – traumatized Falklands veteran Calvert, and affable, chaotic Redbone – set out nightly in a clapped-out camper van to undertake an extraordinary project. Depraved and decadent … His prose is beautifully controlled and so graphic it’s impossible not to picture the scenes he conjures up in striking detail. There is no hiding from the darkness because the writing is so damned good.”—Val McDermid, The Guardian Though nature and the environment is a common theme to all Myers's work, there is more new ground embarked upon here than is retrodden. Humour has more of a place, though its foundations are deeply serious.

Perfect Golden Circle — men behaving mysteriously The Perfect Golden Circle — men behaving mysteriously

As Redbone rightly tells us, there is no perfect circle but Dum spiro spero (While I breath I hope), so we continue striving, breathing, hoping, eventhough PTSD is crippling us or the world buffets as along from one gig to another. Myers ode to a great gentle friendship and the huge satisfaction of creating beauty and being in harmony with the natural world around us. Myers’ short story ‘The Folk Song Singer’ was awarded the Tom-Gallon Prize in 2014 by the Society Of Authors and published by Galley Beggar Press. His short stories and poetry have appeared in dozens of anthologies.

This is about much more than just crop circles. It is obviously about the friendship between Redbone and Calvert. They share scraps of their lives and loves (in Redbone’s case) and the way they see society. Calvert has some reflections on his time in the army and his country: A book is shot through with a romantic, even mystical radicalism of the kind that William Blake would have approved of. * DAILY TELEGRAPH *

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