Unlimited The Spire - by William Golding

Unlimited The Spire - by William Golding

Title: The Spire

Author: William Golding

ISBN: 9780571225460

Page: 215

Format: Paperback

Unlimited The Spire - by William Golding - The Spire, The Spire Dean Jocelin has a vision that God has chosen him to erect a great spire on his cathedral His mason anxiously advises against it for the old cathedral was built without foundations Nevertheless the

William Golding

Sir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, poet, and playwright best known for his 1954 novel Lord of the Flies Golding spent two years in Oxford focusing on sciences however, he changed his educational emphasis to English literature, especially Anglo Saxon.During World War II, he was part of the Royal Navy which he left five years later His bellic experience strongly influenced his future novels.Later, he became a teacher and focused on writing.Some of his influences are classical Greek literature, such as Euripides, and The Battle of Maldon, an Anglo Saxon oeuvre whose author is unknown.The attention given to Lord of the Flies, Golding s first novel, by college students in the 1950s and 1960s drove literary critics attention to it.He was awarded the Booker Prize for literature in 1980 for his novel Rites of Passage, the first book of the trilogy To the Ends of the Earth He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983 and was knighted in 1988.In 2008, The Times ranked Golding third on their list of The 50 greatest British writers since 1945.

Commentaires:

Kalliope

A BALANCING ACTSecond readings are dangerous enterprises Anything can happen When I first read this novel, I thought the Spire, that gives the name to the title, stood defiantly by the end of the book My attention was focused on the descriptions of how architects and builders managed to pull up the complex architectural structures that miraculously were built during the Middle Ages I did not pay too much attention to the writing At the time, my English did not have strong foundations, and it was [...]

Jan-Maat

This might be the finest historical fiction that I have read to date partly because it works through atmosphere rather than detail.The book is short and the story simple Set in medieval England during the reign of Henry II it concerns a new Dean who seeks to have a spire built on his cathedral against advice to the contrary and what results from this The transformation of a cathedral into a medieval building site may not sound terribly exciting but it works through atmosphere and the confusion o [...]

Ben Winch

For some reason, four years ago when I originally wrote this review or one like it , I chose to attach it to The Spire, not Darkness Visible or Pincher Martin or The Inheritors, all equally fine books whose influence on me was no less profound The review, you see, was really of Golding, not of any single one of his books It also included an ornery and unfair assessment of British writers in general, prefaced by a genteel insult of British writing by Raymond Chandler and a brief, confused argumen [...]

Paul

I have loved Lord of the Flies since we read it in English Literature class at school and have read it again a couple of times since It occurred to me a few days ago that, despite my love of Lord of the Flies it has never even entered my head to try any other William Golding books With this in mind, I bought Golding s fifth novel The Spire.Set in the twelfth century A.D or C.E or whatever you want to call it , this fantastic novel tells the story of Dean Jocelin of a cathedral that I m pretty su [...]

Dhanaraj Rajan

May be three and half stars.On the surface, the plot looks very simple Nepotism plays a main role in placing a less qualified person as a Dean of a Cathedral The Dean considers it as his Call Later as a Dean he has a vision and wants to transform the vision into a reality by building a spire to the cathedral This is an impossible undertaking for the Cathedral is on a marshy land and does not have the foundation necessary to hold a spire of 400 feet Everyone is against The Deans considers it his [...]

Rıdvan

William Golding deyince insan n akl na hemen Sineklerin Tanr s geliyor Hadi en iyi ihtimalle Piramit gelsin Ama Kule gelmez Herkes Sineklerin Tanr s na tapar Amanda efenim ne de g zel kitapt r o de il mi imdiden klasikle mi tir te ben Golding olsam Sineklerin Tanr s ndan nefret ederdim B yle bir aheserle kmak piyasaya ve sonras nda da mr n boyunca sadece bir kerecik tadabildi in ba ar y yakalamaya al mak D nyan n en zor i i O kadar roman yaz, hepside birbirinden g zel olsun, ama hepsi de zaman n [...]

M.J. Johnson

I think it s possible to measure to some extent a great piece of writing by how large it looms in your psyche This book and the religious hubris of its main character seemed to take up residence in my dreams from the moment I started reading it It is a book packed with metaphor, and although written in the third person, it is fully inhabited by the main character Jocelyn s mental landscape He is a man obsessed by a vison and a charge, which he is convinced has been placed on him by God, to erect [...]

Issicratea

Golding s The Spire is an extraordinary novel though uneven, I felt, in the same way as his Rites of Passage The first two thirds or three quarters, while the spire is thrusting its improbable way to the heavens, is startlingly good a poem of a novel, almost Blake like in its fierce, odd, visionary, lyric language The ending, for me, came untuned rather, but in a way that helped illustrate what a remarkable balancing act Golding pulls off in that great, prolonged opening sequence Golding taught [...]

Jeffrey

After going to see Salisbury Cathedral and learning that Golding lived just down the street from it, near St Anne s Gate, I was compelled to read this book in which Golding imagines the creation of the enormous spire atop the cathedral In it, he has created is a brilliant, densely woven, intensely introspective study of obsession and faith, which pushes everyone around him to the very edge of endurance Golding did a brilliant job showing us as the readers how the gigantic phallic spire in the sk [...]

Hugo Emanuel

Golding s The Spire concerns Dean Jocelin s attempt to crown his parish s cathedral with a vast spire, despite the cathedral not having the foundations to support its weight and length He is opposed my many, learned man and layman alike, who claim that such attempt is a folly that will only end in disaster Jocelyn s will remains unshaken however, for he firmly believes that he is doing God s work, resorting to coercion and manipulation to force the unwilling collaboration of others in order to f [...]

Peter

A priest builds a spire on a cathedral according to a spiritual vision, believing it to be the calling of God and dependant upon his will and faith to bring it to completion, destroying his congregation, vocation and sanity in the process.The prose is dense and disorientated, flashing between coherent thought, delirium, reality, reverie and nightmare Certain themes and motifs are repeated throughout some of which hints at an understated, repressed sexuality There is often reference in the narrat [...]

Cyndi

Pretty good book I would probably listen to it again just so I can hear Benedict Cumberbatch whisper in my ear Yum This is the story of a clergyman who thinks he was given a divine message to build a spire on his church even though the builder warns against it Soon the clergyman thinks he also hears the devil talking to him, too.As he slips further into madness and the spire grows, we see how the actions of his congregation change without his guidance and how that effects him.

Feliks

What you can notice immediately about a novel like this is that it has nothing to do with today s shabby historical fiction trend Such books merely transpose today s sensationalism to a remote timeperiod but deliver nothing than the same tawdry potboiler intrigues we re familiar with from TV The Spire is, in fact, literature in that Golding exposes a forgotten way of life which heretofore has had little light shed upon it He makes his scenario as authentic as possible, and most important he use [...]

Gary Lawrence

This is the only Golding book I have read since The Lord off the Flies as a teenager and I am glad I made the trip with the author back to medieval England and this story of a man and an unfinished Cathedral Jocelyn is the Dean of the Cathedral a young political appointment of the old King with aristocratic connections, now out of favour with the new King The Cathedral, possible based on Salisbury, since Golding lived close by, lacks a Spire, for good reason, being built on marshy ground with in [...]

Colin Powell

As I read this story I felt as though the author was reaching inside of me and tearing out something that is flawed or blinded by what I want to believe William Golding unsettles me yet this is his most compelling story I have read so far Brilliant C.A Powell Saxon Quest

Jule

The worst I challenge everybody out there to read it and find something to like about it

James

William Golding s The Spire is another of those improving books that my father bought me years ago This edition claims to have been published in 1983, but that feels a little to early 1989 sounds likely That said taking only 14 years to read a gift still feels woefully inadequate Luckily he doesn t have a account, so he ll never know.The Spire is the story of Dean Jocelin and his spire He is a man who has been touched by a vision a man who God has charged with the task to build a spire on top o [...]

Rachel

3.5 stars Typically of a Golding novel, The Spire is a real uphill struggle to get through, but equally typically there is great reward to be found in and at the end of your labours At times it shares a mad, hallucinatory quality with Pincher Martin , which a mind can only take so much of in one sitting My reading of The Spire had ground to almost a halt when I went to see Roger Spottiswoode s adapted play at Salisbury Playhouse, having originally intended to finish the book beforehand The brill [...]

Bettie☯

Description Dean Jocelin has a vision that God has chosen him to erect a great spire on his cathedral His mason anxiously advises against it, for the old cathedral was built without foundations Nevertheless, the spire rises octagon upon octagon, pinnacle by pinnacle, until the stone pillars shriek and the ground beneath it swims Its shadow falls ever darker on the world below, and on Dean Jocelin in particular.Opening He was laughing, chin up, and shaking his head God the Father was exploding in [...]

Özgür Daş

A r s k c bir konu sayfalarca ilgi ekicili i olmayan kuru bir anlat m, yar m b rakma huyum olmad i in ite kaka bitirdim.Golding in okudu um ilk kitab yd kendinden so uttu diyebilirim, uzun bir s re Golding kitaplar n n kapa n a mam san yorum.

Peter

Nothing William Golding wrote about is what Golding wrote about he was a master of metaphor, and his 1964 novel The Spire is a good example as was his masterful Lord of the Flies, still on many reading lists This is not an easy book, and reviews are all over the place It is stream of consciousness filtered through the mind of its main character, a style filled with ambiguation And it is an allegory, speaking of things unspoken On its surface, The Spire is about a medieval cathedral in an unnamed [...]

Neslihan

Sineklerin Tanr s n okumu ve ok sevmi biri olarak kitaptan beklentim b y kt Konu da ilgimi ekmi ti Ama kitab ok zor okudum Sorun eviriden mi kaynaklan yor acaba diye d nd m ve buradaki baz yorumlara g z at nca ayn s k nt lar orjinal dilden okuyanlar n da belirtmi oldu unu g rd m.Zemini ok da sa lam olmayan bir kiliseye transept kulesi in a etmek isteyen bir rahip zerinden insana dair bir ok zaaf n din ve in aat ekseninde anlat lmas ok g zel olabilecekken bir eyler eksik ya da fazla olmu Betimlem [...]

Laurel Hicks

An amazing tale

Glen

I found this a difficult read I enjoyed it I did think Pillars of the Earth was lent something by this

Rob Manwaring

I really like William Golding s novels or at least the number of them I ve read And this was no exception He has a really interesting style straightforward on one level, but really gnarly and hard to follow on another And, I confess, I read this quite quickly, so missed a few key parts of the plot, which actually makes me want to re read it again It was such a clever interplay of allegory, fable, and realism, too It reminded me a lot of Pincher Martin, and that line that most novelists tend to w [...]

Burak

Okumas kolay olmayan bir kitap H zl okunursa da gayet akar fakat bir ey anla lamaz, o y zden yava ilerlemek ok daha faydal ok fazla sembolizm bar nd r yor ve e zamanl ara t rma gerektiriyor bence yle kapsaml bir eser yazm ki Golding, sayfalarca tez yaz labilir bence bu kitap zerine Ben de normal bir okur olarak bir kere okumayla hakk n tam veremedi imi d n yorum, belki ilerideki bir okumada ba arabilirim imdilik 3,5 puan veriyorum.

Leena

I read and listened to this book at the same time, so this review will cover both the work itself, and the narration done of it I read this book after reading some Proust, so it honestly seemed accessible to me, despite being a story told via stream of consciousness thoughts from an increasingly crazy man It s a short book, so if the style is bothering you, I d suggest trying to power through it Do this because this is one of those books that have a bunch of different themes and viewpoints and l [...]

MN

I first read Golding s The Spire when I was about 15 I was completely astonished by it, and read it twice without stopping It was the first time I realised that and perhaps something of how a contemporary writer can represent a cultural worldview which is, of necessity, very different from my own in a way which enabled me to not merely appreciate the differences in conceptualisation but in some way to understand the differences It brought about a paradigm shift in the way I thought about literat [...]

Etna

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Peter

He was laughing, chin up, and shaking his head God the Father was exploding in his face with a glory of sunlight through painted glass Wonderful writing William Golding makes the English language sing in this compelling study of a mediaeval churchman obsessed by the building of an impossible spire that thrusts upwards from the pit and pierces the very heavens Seen from below, the spire is like an upward waterfallat broke all the way to infinity in cascades of exultation that nothing could tramme [...]

Unlimited The Spire - by William Golding

William Golding 215 William Golding

The Spire