Pig Iron

Pig Iron is an important book because it tells a story that has shaped all contemporary Western humans, but is routinely, inexplicably overlooked – the great move from agricultural life to industrial life. The respect in which that shapes human culture and individual humans -- Judge Deborah Orr
His poetic vernacular brims with that quality most sadly lost – humanity * Guardian *
One of my best reads this year ... A deeply rural story, a book full of passion for the English countryside and centred on the conflict between the travelling and the settled community. A very fine read indeed, it expresses a life view almost never examined in our narrow literary culture -- Melvin Burgess
A novel that resists mere classification as a ‘traveller’ book. This is yet another singular portrait of an outsider from Myers. And delivered through authentic characterisation, a monstrously compelling plot, and frequent humour – a rare combination of such successfully crafted elements – Pig Iron deserves to find itself on many a reading list, if not the National Curriculum * 3:AM Magazine *
What a staggeringly powerful book. It held me page by page, totally took me over. If I had to opt for a single word to encompass the experience of reading the book, I’d settle for ‘ferocious’ -- Dominic Cooper, author of The Dead Of Winter and Sunrise.
Original and urgent, exciting and uncompromising * Loud & Quiet, Books of the Year *
Never has an author caught the sense of dread, denial and defeat in the downward spiral so thoroughly and accurately as this since Hubert Selby Jr.’s masterwork Requiem For A Dream. Myers’ blend of low-life settings and high art conceptions, coupled with a sharp knowledge of North-East regional dialectical inflections and the region’s mapping, are a wonderful throwback to Joyce * Louder Than War *
Benjamin Myers’ influences are clear — David Peace’s northern brutalism is evident and there are suggestions of Salinger and Golding but Pig Iron’s savage vision is his alone * Morning Star *