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The Spire Paperback – November 9, 2021

by William Golding (Author)

3.9 294 ratings

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WINNER OF THE DUFF COOPER MEMORIAL PRIZE
Cyprus, 1953. As the island fights for independence from British colonial rule, ancient conflicts between Turkish and Greek Cypriots trouble the glittering Mediterranean waters. Into the brewing storm comes ex-pat writer Lawrence Durrell, yearning for the idyllic island lifestyle of his youth in Corfu. With his poet's eye for beauty and humour - and passable Greek - Durrell settles into a dilapidated villa and brilliantly captures the moods and atmospheres of island life in a changing world. Whether collecting folklore or wild flowers, describing the brewing revolution or eccentric local characters, this is more than just a classic travel memoir - it is an unforgettably intimate portrait of a community lost forever.

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About the Author

William Golding (1911 - 1993) was born in Cornwall and educated at Oxford. In his youth he was a keen actor, lecturer, small-boat sailor, and musician. In 1940 he joined the Royal Navy, where he saw action against battleships and pursued the Bismarck; after the war, he became a schoolteacher until 1961. Golding's debut novel, Lord of the Flies, was published in 1954 after being rescued from Faber & Faber's slush pile of manuscripts, and was filmed by Peter Brook in 1963. He won the Booker Prize for Rites of Passage in 1980, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983, as well as being knighted in 1988. Recently, the Times ranked Golding third on their list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.

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Publisher ‏ : ‎ Faber & Faber (November 9, 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0571362338
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0571362332
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.08 x 0.63 x 7.8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,420,971 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #43,922 in Religious Literature & Fiction
- #60,990 in Literary Fiction (Books)

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3.9 294 ratings

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William Golding

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Born in Cornwall, England, William Golding started writing at the age of seven. Though he studied natural sciences at Oxford to please his parents, he also studied English and published his first book, a collection of poems, before finishing college. He served in the Royal Navy during World War II, participating in the Normandy invasion. Golding's other novels include Lord of the Flies, The Inheritors, The Free Fall, Pincher Martin, The Double Tongue, and Rites of Passage, which won the Booker Prize.

Photo by See page for author [CC BY-SA 3.0 nl (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/nl/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Reading after midnight

A Dark Study of Obsession and Madness

Reviewed in the United States on November 8, 2016

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I read The Spire many years ago. A visit to Salisbury Cathedral prompted me to reread it. Golding draws you into the mind of a bishop obsessed with adding a taller tower to the Cathedral. Believing it is God!s will, the bishop forces the builder to keep building even though he and the rest of his crew believe it's an impossible task, one that will end in the cathedrals destruction. Priests and townspeople agree with the builder and turn against the bishop as he slowly loses his grip on reality. The entire story is told from the bishop's point of view. The reader descends into madness with him. Yet the tower rises slowly. The stones sing and sway. People die. The builder turns to drink. The bishop is cursed and tormented. It's a dark tale of obsession and delusion, powerfully written.

8 people found this helpful

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JC

A Complex Read

Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 2022

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The sight of Salisbury Cathedral set Golding to thinking about the problems that must have been encountered in erecting its dominating spire. The novel, portions of which are stream of consciousness, chronicles the thoughts and obsessions of the partly fictional Dean who drove the project in the face of clerical and secular opposition. There's a great deal that doesn't come clear until the final chapters. . . .an invitation to reread the book to become aware of the technique of the author.

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Metaphor

Reviewed in the United States on February 23, 2014

Golding is a Noble Prize winner for literature and it is little surprise that this story is literature. The plot is a metaphor. The protagonist tries to build a spire on a church that has no foundation and in doing this he loses his mind. The spire is considered a reach or like touching the heavens and all the churches resources go into building something that isn’t going to work. The church stops worship services because of the construction.

The metaphorical lesson is that the vicar in tried to reach heavenward to God and lost touch of the churches purpose to worship God. The lack of foundation in the church building represented unsuitability for this church and the vicar to reach heavenward. In other words in trying to be godly he became un godly. A good lesson for any organisation that strives to be more than it can be, it might become disconnected to its purpose. When an organisation loses touch with its purpose it will fall apart.

I found the writing style kind of dry and it took extra effort to read this book. The author has a great reputation and I will read some of the other books he has written.

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Mr. Ken C. Fenske

Facinating

Reviewed in the United States on February 8, 2010

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This is written in a "stream of consciousness" style which makes is somewhat inaccessible and difficult to follow. The book is written as the thoughts of the insane bishop building the spire.

What interested me in the book is actually visiting Salisbury cathedral in England and seeing the impossible spire myself. Golding taught at the school attached to Salisbury cathedral and this inspired his story. The hubris of building the tallest tower and stone spire in England on top of thin pillars never meant to hold the weight, themselves built on 4' deep foundations set on wet gravel is amazing. The fact this this was done in the thirteen hundreds is amazing and might inspire one to faith.

Read this classic and then go to see that cathedral that has been continually about to fall since the middle ages.

11 people found this helpful

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Serge Danielson-Francois

Dean Jocelin --Voted off the Island

Reviewed in the United States on August 6, 2015

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Golding never disappoints. In an anachronistic world, Dean Jocelin could easily have been a member of the group of boys in Lord of the Flies

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Benjamin Pratt

A Study in Self-righteous Arrogance

Reviewed in the United States on November 26, 2013

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I reread this difficult but worthy book during the shut down of our government. Golding has mirrored the self-righteous arrogance of those who have the only answer. I had read the book 45 years earlier but found it more impressive now that I could ever appreciate in my youth. This is the painful tale of a man whose arrogant self-righteous posture reeks havoc and destruction on the lives of others as he descends into insanity. It is Golding at his best and most difficult.

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Wood

Disappointing

Reviewed in the United States on October 27, 2013

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I had hoped to learn a little more about how the spire was built and the history of the Cathedral. I thought the writing was over wrought and generally uninteresting.

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Karen Overman-Edmiston

One of the Best. Period ...

Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2016

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Perhaps one of the finest books written, certainly one of the finest I've read. An emotional and intellectual tour de force. There are few writers who explore the crevices of the human heart and mind with the dexterity achieved in this novel (perhaps Malouf in 'Remembering Babylon' or Kundera in his earlier novels? Certainly Shakespeare.). Not everyone's cup of tea ... but certainly mine, "... it's like the apple tree ..." Highly recommended for those with patience.

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Silure Dumnonii

Hard going

Reviewed in Australia on November 18, 2017

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I love William Golding' s work but I found this pretty tough. The story is simple enough but the reader was left to extrapolate to cover things that remained unstated. This is a long standing strategy of Golding' s but in this novel the reader has to jump chasms, not simply join the dots. I could give examples but that would supply too many spoilers. It is enough to say that I had to read some sections several times in order to figure out 'what just happened?' and even then I wasn't always sure...
The language, as ever, is beautiful but in this book it seemed far more opaque than in the author's other books and on occasion I struggled for meaning.
Despite all this I read right to the end because I wanted to find out what happened, but even the closing chapter left me guessing.
This will never be a favourite of mine but it gets 4 stars for the beauty of its clouded language and its atmospheric depiction of time and place.

Susi Sonne

super ausdrucksvolle Stimme für tolles Kopfkino

Reviewed in Germany on May 30, 2015

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Dies ist ein ungekürztes Hörbuch zur Novelle "The Spire" von William Golding in englischer Sprache, vorgelesen von Benedict Cumberbatch.

Die Hauptfigur, Dekan Jocelin, glaubt er sei von Gott ausersehen einen neuen Kirchturm bauen zu lassen. Er ist ganz verzückt von dieser Vorstellung. Auch nach mehreren Schwierigkeiten lässt sich Jocelin nicht von seinem Vorhaben abbringen. Im Laufe der Handlung wird Jocelin immer verwirrter und besessener. Er zieht sich in eine Scheinwelt zurück, hat Alpträume und Satanserscheinungen. Während dessen wird um jeden Preis der Turmbau vorangetrieben.
Die Entwicklung der Hauptfigur und die Fertigstellung des Turmes werden im Laufe der Handlung spannen erzählt.

Ich habe mir dieses Hörbuch vor allem wegen der tollen Stimme von B. Cumberbatch gekauft. Zusätzlich habe ich mir die Novelle als Taschenbuch zum Mitlesen besorgt, weil ich sonst leider nicht alles verstehe, was vorgelesen wird. Teilweise liest B. Cumberbatch sehr schnell, aber immer mit einer sehr starken, ausdrucksvollen Betonung. Es macht Spaß ihm zuzuhören.

Jemand, der sehr gut Englisch spricht, benötigt natürlich nicht die Novelle in Schriftform zum Mitlesen und kann einfach nur die Augen schließen und dem Kopfkino freien Lauf lassen. Allen anderen würde ich empfehlen mitzulesen. Dem Hörgenuss steht trotzdem nichts entgegen.

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Neil Frost

William Golding: The Spire

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 12, 2013

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Like a previous reviewer, I studied William Golding's The Spire for A-level English Literature. That was 30 years ago and so to mark the occasion, I decided to read once again (not for the first time in those 30 years) what I have listed as my favourite piece of literature of all time and to review it.

The first thing that struck me about it this time around was how short it is. At 223 pages, it's less than 1 / 3 the length of the average Dan Brown novel. This is by no means a criticism from me (against either Golding or Brown). On the contrary, I find both excellent writers and it is amazing the latter's lengthier novels cover a time frame of c. 24 hours. With The Spire, Golding works in months and years.

On the surface, The Spire is an easy novel: it's plot is about the building of a spire on an already existing cathedral, the foundations for which are lacking. The protagonist Dean Jocelin has a faith and belief so great, that he is prepared to sacrifce virtually anything and anyone to see that his vision is realised: the price is high. Faith then is one of the novel's main themes, but through the extensive use of symbolism, Golding addresses other themes in a deeper way: delusion, fertility and paganism in particular.

Surrounding the Dean are Roger Mason, the master builder and his wife Rachel along with Pangall, the cathedral's caretaker and his wife Goody. As the spire rises, Golding shows the effects of it on each: as the review on the back of my copy comments, it's shadow falls most darkly on the Dean himself.

Another reviewer here has virtually echoed my own thoughts on The Spire, but I would like to add the following comments.

The Spire is not a book that possibly gives up it's secrets on first reading and I can imagine that many critics would be put off by that, adhering to the belief that it's not a good writer who can't say what he wants as clearly as possible, with as few words as possible. A tradesman is only as good as his tools, however, and one of the strong points about good literature for me is the use of tools such as symbolism by a writer to convey their message. Yes, they possibly require more than one reading, but, yes, at each reading a new interpretation can be taken there from.

I like the cathedral being compared to a ship, with the spire as it's mast and then as a man lying on his back with the spire as a phallus. At one point, the spire is compared to a dunce's cap.

There is a degree of violence running through the book, quite literally as the builders revolt and figuratively as light smashes through the cathedral windows. There are a number of passages which make the book for me:

"Doomsday coming up; or the roof of hell down there. Perhaps the damned stirring, or the noseless men turning over and thrusting up; or the living pagan earth, umbound at last and waking, Dia Mater."

"But the day had not done with him."

" ... the invisible lines of the spire ... had sketched themselves in the sunny skies over the crossways."

There is a cameo appearance of a medieval jester named Zany.

The novel's strongest point for me however remains it's descriptions of the weather, in tandem with the ecclesiastical calender. It rains so hard, that the pit at the crossways becomes flooded. The wind brings either more rain or blows the clouds away, a sign of cleansing. Lent - a "stern" time - ironically brings good weather and a positive mood for the builders. Easter on the other hand, is full of noise and sun. Fog fills the church at one point and the Dean is unable to see his own feet, yet when he climbs the tower (as he often does in order to escape the mundane below) the sun is shining.

Finally the spire is completed, but the novel is not and Golding describes the after effects, in particular on the Dean and the master builder. I shall give no spoilers here, but conclude that 30 years later The Spire is still my favourite piece of literature.

7 people found this helpful

Mark Pender

Difficult read but rewarding.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 12, 2018

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This is a difficult read but rewarding. Golding's style is tricky. I was recommended this book by a friend as we were having a conversation about Salisbury Cathedral.

Lucy Yuan

Three Stars

Reviewed in Australia on March 20, 2015

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NOT BAD

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