The
Spire is a disturbing,
provocative and profound novel. Not a long read, but a book with a long emotional
and spiritual reach. And, like the spire itself, grounded perhaps less than firmly on earth but aspiring heavenwards.
The story
is simple, the message needing to be carefully teased out. It charts the decent into theological disorder and human madness of Jocelin, a cleric with the vision of a massive spire for his
cathedral. Consumed and motivated by hubris and pride, and tormented by demons of envy,
lust and despair, Jocelin brings social and psychological chaos to the claustrophobic community
of masons, workers and fellow clergy in his parish as he chides, bullies and
blackmails those around him to construct his monumental ‘bible in stone’. His
blind foolishness, said to parody that of the cleric responsible for the spire
at Salisbury, with its virtually non-existent foundations, is a metaphor for
faith, and faith’s doppelgänger, doubt, and provides a rewarding if unsettling listen.
Jocelin is
a vain and poorly educated man, full of ambition and conceit, driven it would seem
more by his sense of his own self-importance than by care and concern for the
Church and its flock. He can barely read, let alone know anything as technical
as the mason’s art. He demands that his own image is displayed in stone on the
spire, while he mocks the lives of those below to whom he considers himself
superior, as if he is experiencing his own life on a higher spiritual plane.
In so many
ways, this satire on the established church mirrors Golding’s targets in his other
novels: taking a simple truth and stretching credulity to the far reaches of
mankind’s conceits. And
Benedict Cumberbatch’s commanding reading more than justifies the public
acclaim he currently enjoys. May he read many more such masterpieces.
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