A Dean in the Middle Ages is inspired by a vision to add a spire to his cathedral. Opposition includes the master builder he hires to supervise the work. Will his monomaniacal determination win the day or will his dreams come crashing down?
The wikipedia page on this novel has a detailed account of the plot (with spoilers), the characters and the symbolism.
For me, the best thing about the book is the carefully constructed gappy stream of consciousness narration (all from Dean Jocelin's perspective) which is a masterclass in how to hook and beguile the reader into piecing together what is going on from the sometimes disjointed clues.
The key turning points are at the one-third mark and the two-thirds mark.
Captain Ahab meets Leopold Bloom?
Selected quotes
- “The most solid thing was the light. It smashed through the rows of windows in the south aisle, so that they exploded with colour, it slanted before him from right to left in an exact formation, ... Everywhere, fine dust gave these rods and trunks of light the importance of a dimension.” (Ch 1)
- “He had a tariff of knees. He knew how they should be after this length of kneeling or that.” (Ch 1)
- “Once more, the windows were coming together. the Saint’s life still burned in them with blue and red and green; but the spark and shatter of the sun had shifted.” (Ch 1)
- “The master builder often looked at things without seeing them; and then again, he would look at a thing as if he could see nothing else.” (Ch 2)
- “When the rain drizzled, then time was a drizzle, slow and to be endured.” (Ch 3)
- “When the wind came, it ... cuffed the air this way and that.” (Ch 3)
- “A workman fell through the hole above the crossways, and left a scream scored all the way down the air which was so thick it seemed to keep the scream as something mercilessly engraved there.” (Ch 3)
- “A midday without sun and therefore blasphemously without hope.” (Ch 3)
- “Some of the gargoyles seemed diseased, as they yelled their soundless blasphemies and derisions into the wind, yet made no more noise than death in another country.” (Ch 4) “no more noise than death in another country.”: what a phrase!
- “He was helpless ... as a girl herding too many geese.” (Ch 4) A nice mediaeval simile.
- “There comes a point when a vision’s no more than a child’s playing let’s pretend.” (Ch 4)
- “The earth is a huddle of noseless men grinning upward, there are gallows everywhere, the blood of childbirth never ceases to flow, nor sweat in the furrow, the brothels are down there and drunk men lie in the gutter. There is no good thing in all this circle but the great house, the ark, the refuge, a ship to contain all these people and now fitted with a mast.” (Ch 5) Earlier in the book, the cathedral is compared to a man lying on his back which makes the spire an erect penis.
- “There's a kinship among men who have sat by a dying fire and measured the worth of their life by it.” (Ch 10)
- “Life itself is a rickety building.” (Ch 10)
- “His thoughts went trotting away like a horse unharnessed from the cart.” (Ch 11)
William Golding was a Booker prize winner (1980) and the 1983 Nobel Laureate. He wrote poetry, drama and these novels:
- Lord of the Flies (1954)
- The Inheritors (1955)
- Pincher Martin (1956)
- Free Fall (1959)
- The Spire (1964)
- The Pyramid (1967)
- Darkness Visible (1979) (which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize)
- To the Ends of the Earth (trilogy)
- Rites of Passage (1980) (Booker Prize winner)
- Close Quarters (1987)
- Fire Down Below (1989)
- The Paper Men (1984)
- The Double Tongue (posthumous publication 1995)
My copy has a delightful cover by John Piper, an artist who designed a large opus of ecclesiastical work, including stained glass windows.
August 2025; 223 pages
Published by Faber and Faber in 1964
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