'Cracking ... Richly distinctive stories, with unnerving, dark plotlines' Independent 'One of the most singular, moving and crucial voices of our times' David Peace In Male Tears, a debut collection of stories that brings together over fifteen years of work, Benjamin Myers lays bare the male psyche in all its fragility, complexity and failure, its hubris and forbidden tenderness. Farmers, fairground workers and wandering pilgrims, gruesome gamekeepers, bare-knuckle boxers and ex-cons with secret passions, the men that populate these unsettling, wild and wistful stories form a multi-faceted, era-spanning portrait of just what it means to be a man.
Benjamin Myers was born in Durham in 1976. His most recent novel, The Offing, was a bestseller. Other works include The Gallows Pole, which won the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction, Beastings which was awarded the Portico Prize for Literature, and Pig Iron which won the inaugural Gordon Burn Prize. He has also published non-fiction, poetry and crime novels and his journalism has appeared in publications including the Guardian, New Statesman, Spectator, Caught By The River and many more. He lives in the Upper Calder Valley, West Yorkshire. benmyers.com / @BenMyers1
Title: Male Tears
Author: Myers, Benjamin
ISBN: 9781526611352
Binding:
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publication Date: 2021-04-29
Number of Pages: 288
Weight: 0.3981 kg
Impressive ... Myers' compassionate and tender approach to his characters makes even the most flawed of them worthy of empathy * New Statesman *
In his varied, and often satirical, takes on an alternative English history, steeped in the mythic, folkloric and grotesque, Myers taps into a rich vein of Yorkshire gothic, both menacing and comically absurd, its register set somewhere between Ted Hughes, Emily Bronte and The League of Gentlemen. The stories resonate most when his dark humour and lyricism combined * Times Literary Supplement *
Richly distinctive stories, with unnerving, dark plotlines ... Bleakly funny * Independent *
Moving fast and deadly, the stories in Male Tears carry us from bleak farms to lonely reservoirs and snowbound woods. Benjamin Myers writes sentences with a charging pulse and the account they give of masculinity is a bloody one, stripped of romance and larded with wit -- Chris Power
Benjamin Myers' stories in Male Tears cut right to the heart of the matter. This is fiction to be taken in gulps of pleasure - full of fire and light, wisdom and violence -- Rob Doyle
One of the most interesting, restless writers of his generation * Daily Mail *
Benjamin Myers's multifaceted short stories grapple with the nature of masculinity * Observer *
These collected stories are by turns bleak, sardonic, darkly funny and grievously moving ... Myers' theme is masculinity in all its varied woundedness, violence and pathos. There is gritty realism, otherwordly parable, pastoral vignettes and cutting satire, crafted from vivid pros and striking imagery ... They are incisive, powerfully revealing of the ways men are shaped, and how that shapes our world * SA Weekend *
A powerful new voice * The Times *
Myers is the master of rural English noir -- Paul Kingsnorth
One of the most singular, moving and crucial voices of our times -- David Peace
Powerful, visceral writing -- Pat Barker
