A strange, magical extraordinary book. It's so atmospheric, so strange and affecting. I don't think I've ever read anything quite like it before, and I'm not sure how Myers has made it work, but he has - I was totally gripped by this -- JENN ASHWORTH This is the second novel by Benjamin Myers that I have read, Beastings being the first. The Perfect Golden Circle couldn’t be more different to Beastings, which was far darker and written in a completely different style. Yet, the beauty of Benjamin’s writing persists across both novels. I really do need to read more of his work, I love the way he writes. Take this, for example, which is about an eclipse: Over the course of a burning hot summer, two very different men — Calvert, an ex-soldier traumatized by his experience in the Falklands War, and his affable freind Redbone — set out nightly in a decrepit camper van to undertake an extraordinary project. The beauty of Myers’ language alone is reward enough to read this superb novel, but The Perfect Golden Circle offers so much more: an all-too-rare literary depiction of rural England, the depths of the two central characters, the class and ecological concerns; but most of all the human need for what the Welsh poet Bobi Jones called ‘the boundless mystery that comforts being.’A truly remarkable novel.” — Ron Rash, New York Times bestselling author of Serena The two protagonists in the story are truly driven by their art, and their deep-seated need to bring their increasingly grandiose visions to life.” — Artnet

Perfect Golden Circle by Benjamin Scala Radio Book Club: The Perfect Golden Circle by Benjamin

During the winter months you could get as little as four hours of day light while in the summer you can get close to 24 hours! With that said though, you can really go around the Golden Circle at any time of year.At night, Redbone and Calvert traverse England's rural south, creating massive crop circles in fields Calvert has researched during his quiet, darkened days, using the designs Redbone has so painstakingly created. The Perfect Golden Circle is set during the impossibly hot summer of 1989 and chronicles each crop circle created, culminating in Redbone's most ambitious design: the Honeycomb Double Helix. Myers has produced another great novel here to go with The Offing and Cuddy, already two of my favourites of all time. This was is set in the summer of 1989 in rural Wiltshire and centred around crop circles. It was the time of illegal raves and New Age Travellers and the Thatcher era was beginning to wind down with protests about the poll tax. Den perfekten Kreis. Den könnten wir niemals hinbekommen. Er existiert nicht. Ehrlich gesagt, ich glaube, nichts was von Menschen gemacht wird, kann je perfekt sein.“ (S. 107) Themes of British colonisation weigh heavily throughout the narrative, informed mostly by Calvert’s experiences of fighting in the Falklands war. I found this interesting within a contemporary novel, the exploration of colonialism, that is. Hand in hand with this is Calvert’s feelings against war and his disdain for the British aristocracy. Woven together, it makes for a powerful sentiment encapsulated within a poetically beautiful novel about fighting trauma and power in the most imaginative of ways.

The Perfect Golden Circle by Benjamin Myers | Goodreads

Benjamin Myers’ stories inMale Tearscut 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 Mark asked, ‘Your previous novel, The Gallows Pole, has been adapted for television by Shane Meadows. How did this come about?’ In parts the story has laugh out loud lines and in others my heart was in my mouth for fear of them being caught or vandalism ruining the perfection. It is heartwarming and heartbreaking. The human circle maker is a hugely divisive figure. He (that is not to forget his female counterparts) carries the phenomenon on his shoulders; his creations are to be worshipped but his artistry is to be decried by his cultish audience, his person libelled. He is the craftsman who silently works the moon-soaked fields of southern England, one who chooses to remain tight-lipped on his achievements and allow his unclaimed works to shape the faith of others. His actions invite three obvious questions: Who is he, both on the surface and inside? Why does he bother? What does he get from it? Benjamin Myers is not the first fiction writer to try and explore the possible answers, but with The Perfect Golden Circle he is easily the most successful. And as the summer wears on, and their designs grow ever more ambitious, the two men find that their work has become a cult international sensation—and that an unlikely and beautiful friendship has taken root as the wheat ripens from green to gold.

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Myers sums up the spirit of this book when he writes through Calvert.... “Hope is essential. Hope is the human currency, and we’re spreading it about.” The notion neatly encapsulates the generosity of Myers’s magnetic novel, which brings together ingredients as diverse as folk song, Gaia theory and trauma, grounding them all in a memorable hymn to beauty. The best writer in the UK expands his range once again with another first class novel which will be just as surprising to fans as The Offing proved. Two men - SAS veteran Calvert and a sort of old hippy (though he'd likely be offended at the description), Redbone - roam the fields of rural England creating elaborate, revolutionary crop circles. Two counter-culture friends, bonded together through their art and quirks of personality, undergo an ambitious project of crop circles in ‘89, near London, attempting to outdo anything before constructed.