Ratings3
Average rating3.7
15
Ratings3
Average rating3.7
The stunning new novel from the prize-winning author of The Wake. 'Come to a place like this . . . and you will understand soon enough that this world is a great animal, alive and breathing.' Beast plunges you into the world of Edward Buckmaster, a man alone on a west-country moor. What he has left behind we don't yet know; what he faces is an existential battle with himself, the elements, and something that he begins to see in the margins of his vision ... Beast is a vivid exploration of isolation, courage, and the search for truth. Shocking and exhilarating, it confirms Paul Kingsnorth as one of our most daring and rewarding contemporary writers.
Featured Series
3 primary booksBuccmaster Trilogy is a 3-book series with 3 primary works first released in 2014 with contributions by Paul Kingsnorth.
Reviews with the most likes.
This is a slender, quick to read book about a man, Edward Buckmaster, who has apparently left his wife and child to live alone in an abandoned stone house on the moors in the west of England. As the book begins, he's standing in a river for hours, letting his legs go numb. “ I climbed into the river in the early morning and I stood there until the sun was highest in the sky. I let the water take my body away from me so I could see what was beyond my body. I let the river numb me and I understood that I had always been numb. The sky opened a crack, but only a crack. There was still something beyond that I could not touch.” Buckmaster is in search of something, but he doesn't know what it is, or how he will know if he finds it. We get some hints that the people he left behind tried to dissuade him from doing this. He compares himself to ancient hermits and saints who left civilization behind to live in the wild, closer to God.
Things take a disturbing turn when Buckmaster tries to fix a hole in his roof during a storm and is apparently blown off the roof. The narrative breaks and then picks up again in the middle of a sentence. He's severely injured, but doesn't know how it happened. Although his body begins to heal, he becomes disoriented. The landscape seems empty of other living beings, until he catches a glimpse of a large black beast. He becomes obsessed with finding the beast, and at the same time stops eating. Punctuation becomes more sparse in the narrative. It's hard to know whether what's happening in the story is real or a hallucination.
I liked this book a lot. I'm a fan of Paul Kingsnorth's essays, and his novels ( this is his 2nd) add another dimension to his writing about living in the Anthropocene.
To be fair, I really struggled to decide between 3 and 4 stars.
If you could break it down into categories/aspects, I think it'd average 4, hence the decision.
This novella is fascinating. At first you don't realise the character is descending into so sort of mental decline, and the loss of grammar is jarring, but then it all clicks.
I have many questions. Don't read this if you want to get to the end and feel complete. You won't. My imagination is performing acrobatics, and I'm enjoying it.
I feel that this is a very polarising bit of literature, and you'll either be enthralled, or absolutely hate it.
It's short, at only 169 pages, so worth the time.
