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The prizewinning Durham-born writer on his latest novel – a postwar story of a young man’s friendship with an older woman
Benjamin Myers’s eighth novel, The Offing, is the tale of Robert, a young man who, in the aftermath of the second world war, sets out across Yorkshire to Robin Hood’s Bay, where he forges an unlikely friendship with an eccentric and artistic older woman, Dulcie. Myers’s novels have always been challenging, intelligent and linguistically adventurous, and he built up a loyal underground following with books such as Beastings, Pig Iron, and The Gallows Pole. This latter was his breakthrough success, winning the Walter Scott prize. He lives in Hebden Bridge with his wife, the novelist Adele Stripe.
Your previous novels were put out by a small independent publisher, Bluemoose. After the Walter Scott prize and the huge sales of The Gallows Pole, The Offing feels like a departure both in the fact that it’s being published by Bloomsbury and in its more gentle, pastoral feel.I would describe it as quite a U-turn. It probably sounds a little bit disingenuous to say this, but I wrote the book for myself and for the preservation of my mental health. It was somewhere to escape to during dark winters in Yorkshire, but also I was reading a lot of pastoral fiction, a lot of Laurie Lee and HE Bates. For want of a better word, stuff that’s quite “nice”. I thought the world was getting very angry, bitter and divided. I thought I’d put out something that’s positive, inject a bit of sunlight into the proceedings. Continue reading...