Description

Winner of the Portico Prize for Literature and the Northern Writers’ Award

‘A brilliant, brutal novel’ ROBERT MACFARLANE

A girl and a baby. A priest and a poacher. A savage pursuit through the landscape of a changing rural England.

When a teenage girl leaves the workhouse and abducts a child placed in her care, the local priest is called upon to retrieve them. Chased through the Cumbrian mountains of a distant past, the girl fights starvation and the elements, encountering the hermits, farmers and hunters who occupy the remote hillside communities. An American Southern Gothic tale set against the violent beauty of Northern England, Beastings is a sparse and poetic novel about morality, motherhood and corruption.

Publisher Review

Intimate and elemental ... Myers has the potential to become a true tragedian of the fells * Guardian * This bitter, alarming, occasionally visionary novel of the British wilderness is likely to linger in the mind for some time * New Statesman * Myers is quite simply an excellent and already accomplished writer. His prose is taut, confident, professionally polished but at the same time maintaining a sense of rustic and unrefined authenticity, that which is truly hewn -- Sarah Hall I don't know if I have encountered such a strong, engaging character in a book for some time: this is startling, sublime writing * Caught by the River * A story that will grip you to the final word and a tour de force * Loud & Quiet * A gripping ride through an imagined heart of Lake District darkness. I couldn't have writ it better myself * Hamilton, British Sea Power * Wonderful - tough and generous and beautiful -- Will Atkins