Description

Raymond Carver said it was possible ‘to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language and endow these things – a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman’s earring – with immense, even startling power’. Nowhere is this alchemy more striking than in the title story of Cathedral in which a blind man guides the hand of a sighted man as together they draw the cathedral the blind man can never see. Many view this story, and indeed this collection, as a watershed in the maturing of Carver’s work to a more confidently poetic style.

Publisher Review

The twelve stories collected in his book Cathedral are remarkable for the originality of vision which he manages to convey in scrupulously simple prose. Carver's is a considerable and an enterprising talent * Guardian * Cathedral ought to establish his reputation as one of the most original new voices in fiction to appear from the United States for many years -- Bill Buford * Times Literary Supplement * Carver is a writer of astonishing compassion and honesty, utterly free of pretence and affection, his eye set only on describing and revealing the world as he sees it. His eye is so clear, it almost breaks your heart * Washington Post * An important book in a unique career * New York Review of Books *