Godric (1980)
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, 1981
Book Description
The peace of Godric of Finchdale’s hermitage is spoiled by the arrival of Reginald, a young monk sent by the Bishop of Durham to write his biography.
What Reginald discovers is a temperamental old man with a distaste for rumours about his own holiness. The tale Godric tells his unwelcome companion is filled with paradox – a life punctuated by miracles and murder, self-sacrifice and robbery, penitence and incest.
There by the banks of the Wear, Godric recounts his history, beginning with his near-death experience in the sea as a young man, and his encounter with an apparition of St. Cuthbert on the Isle of Farne. Reginald’s delight at these innocent origins is soon dampened, however, as the old hermit remembers his subsequent career as a peddler of counterfeit relics, and his life of crime as a pirate and defrauder of pilgrims, with his partner Roger Mouse onboard the Saint Espirit.
Through pilgrimage, repentance, and struggle, Godric acquires the mantle of ‘Saint’, before finally retreating to his hermitage. There, beset by temptation and uplifted by mystical experiences, the old man discovers the bittersweet truth of the life of faith, and the numbing penitential powers of the icy waters of the river.
Godric was a finalist for the 1881 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.
Reviews
“Sin, spiritual yearning, rebirth, fierce asceticism—these hagiographic staples aren't easy to revitalize, but Frederick Buechner goes at the task with intelligent intensity and a fine readiness to invent what history doesn't supply. He contrives a style of speech for his narrator—Godric himself—that's brisk and tough-sinewed[...]. He avoids metaphysical fiddle, embedding his narrative in domestic reality—familiar affection, responsibilities, disasters [...]. All on his own, Mr. Buechner has managed to reinvent projects of self-purification and of faith as piquant matter for contemporary fiction [in a book] notable for literary finish... Frederick Buechner is a very good writer indeed.”
— Benjamin DeMott, The New York Times Book Review
“A remarkable book... [A] true work of art.”
— Atlantic Monthly
“Godric is a memorable book...a marvelous gem of a book...destined to become a classic of its kind.”
— Michael Heskett, Houston Chronicle
“From the book's opening sentence [the] sensible reader will be caught in Godric's grip…Godric glimmers brightly.’
— Peter S. Prescott, Newsweek
“In the extraordinary figure of Godric, both stubborn outsider and true child of God, both worldly and unworldly, Frederick Buechner has found an ideal means of exploring the nature of spirituality. Godric is a living battleground where God fights it out with the world, the Flesh, and the Devil.”
— London Times Literary Supplement
“With a poet's sensibly and a high reverent fancy, Frederick Buechner paints a memorable portrait.”
— Edmund Fuller, The Wall Street Journal
“Godric is one of those great books, the kind where we prolong the reading, dread turning that last page, because the journey has been so musical, the journey so complete as to rearrange the chords of our inner lives, the kind of book that makes you want to run up to strangers and ask them if they’ve read it.’
— Dale Brown, The Book of Buechner
“In the extraordinary figure of Godric, both stubborn outsider and true child of God, both worldly and unworldly, Buechner has found an ideal means of exploring the nature of spirituality.”
— Peter Lewis, Times Literary Supplement
“Godric is absolutely astounding, and no matter how many times you read it, it is still moving.”
—Anthony Abbott, author
“The first line of Godric is one of the best in all of literature.”
—Revd Dr Michael Lloyd, Principal, Wycliffe Hall, University of Oxford
