THE PILLARS OF THE EARTH
Ken Follett
Medieval Magic and Mystery
> medieval Christian mysticism
> witchcraft
> curses
> prophetic dreams
> the making of a saint
Medieval Outsiders
> an unemployed master-mason and his family, on the road and starving
> a "witch" who cursed her husband's murderers and is living in the forest with her son
This is the real thing: a novel of epic proportions set at one of the high-points of the medieval period and written by one of the best and best-selling novelists of our time.
Ken Follett, author of Eye of the Needle, The Key to Rebecca, and Triple (my favourite of his modern action-stories), turns his hand to the historical novel - and judging by the length of it, and the sheer sweep and power of it, this must have been something he dreamed of doing, something important to him personally.
Certainly it is a masterpiece.
Like Golding's The Spire, it is a story of cathedral-building. But unlike The Spire, which has a single focus (the growing madness of the spire-obsessed Dean), this is a full-scale novel with a huge cast of characters many of whom we come to know intimately: they range from the highest to the lowest in the land, their lives intertwined and interconnected.
Tom Builder, master-mason, tramping the roads looking for work with his family, dreams of building a cathedral - the most beautiful cathedral in the country. And eventually, despite all the difficulties, and with the help of his step-son Jack, his dream is realised. The second half of the book I read in one sitting, through the evening and half through the night (and there are over a thousand pages), then woke late in the morning to find I had been dreaming. I was there, then, with Jack and Alfred and Aliena: this had never happened to me before.
The Pillars of the Earth is also one of those novels from which you learn all about the history of the period: in this case, from the death of Henry I (grandson of "William the Conqueror or William the Bastard, depending on who is speaking") through the period of civil war between Stephen and Maud, to the death of Thomas à Becket - brilliantly described - under Henry II, grandson of Henry I.
Apparently, Ken is now working on a sequel to The Pillars of the Earth. It is due out in 2007. I am waiting.
JM
