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Fall of Giants (The Century Trilogy) by Ken Follett
Book Summary InformationAuthor: Ken Follett Edition: Hardcover Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published) Published: 2010-09-28 ISBN: 0525951652 Number of pages: 985 Publisher: Dutton Adult
Book Reviews of Fall of Giants (The Century Trilogy)Book Review: Just sigh after sigh... Summary: 3 Stars
After I closed this book, I gave some thought to what consistently disappointed me about it.
I am very interested in the period of history covered by FALL OF GIANTS, and over time I've read several histories of the era. I don't claim to be an expert, but I think I can claim some knowledge of the period of time (1911-1923) that this work of fiction portrays. I write this because I imagine many readers of FALL OF GIANTS and of this review will think (and comment): Gee, she's taking a work of FICTION pretty seriously; she should lighten up! But I can't "lighten up" when it comes to historical fiction... I think it's important that such fiction be rooted in fact; that its characters have life-like qualities, and be engaged in life-like situations, IF that fiction is truly aiming to be a fine, outstanding book (and not a novel-for-television).
Something bugged me about the characters in this story almost from its beginning. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, then after a few more chapters, I realized I wasn't achieving total involvement in this saga/story; that I was staying on the "outside", mostly because so many of these characters were so - puppet-like. In other words, the author had all his characters' strings showing; clues and hints were too obvious and there was a sense of predictability about what was going to happen to almost every character.
For example: SPOILER ALERT - SPOILER - From the instant I read that Ethel worked for the Earl Fitzherbert, and that she's young and very attractive, I just `knew' she was going to end up sleeping with Fitz. And she did. Somehow I `knew' Fitz's attempts at withdrawal during sex wouldn't be successful, and Ethel would end up pregnant. And she did. And there would be anger, bitterness and injustice, and yet Ethel would somehow come up on top in the end. And she did. (END OF SPOILER)
Guy Dewar, the main American character, was handled especially clumsily, I thought. The love life that Mr. Follett gives Guy is pure soap opera. (SPOILER ALERT) He lurches from woman to woman - three women, by the end of the book, before he finally finds true love. Frankly, I hardly believe Guy "loved" any of the three. (END OF SPOILER) His interaction with Woodrow Wilson is just plain dull; we learn something about Wilson - he types his own speeches; has bad teeth (mentioned at least twice) and high blood pressure - but little else. Gus is just a receptacle for the historical Wilson's actions, and acts as a cipher of sorts, to give the American POV, while the war in Europe plays out. Guy is flat as a pancake.
When it came to the character of Rosa Hellman ... eesh. This is going to sound very strange, but whenever Rosa was on the scene, I couldn't help thinking of an actress - her name escapes me, but she was the girl with laconic delivery, the actress who played the girl who lied on Finch's behalf so he'd look like a stud, in the movie "American Pie". Rosa seemed drawn with about as much depth. She's given a blind eye; works as a newspaper reporter, and has a past as an "anarchist" (particularly unbelievable). Aside from that, there's little to distinguish her from the semi-sarcastic, caustic high school girl who simply tells it like it is, in that silly (but sometimes funny) movie.
But the true letdown for me was the development of Billy Williams's character. I actually liked the Welsh portion of the book very much, from the portrait of Billy's first day in the mine; the characters of the miners; the details about his parents and grandfather (which remain consistent and let them become fully-realized characters that a reader can care about). But when the author chose to have Billy SPOILER ALERT - SPOILER), previously strongly religious, known as Billy-with-Jesus, lose his faith at age 16 after a mine explosion and several deaths, and following his father's rejection of his pregnant sister, the author rather lost me, too. It makes perfect sense that Billy would question and doubt his faith in God in a challenging time, but when he lost his faith -bang! zoom! Gone! - with such absolute suddenness (basically at his first challenge, one could say), Billy lost a really compelling and different part of his character. It's so rare to encounter a truly religious character in a novel, and I would have liked to see Billy carry on in faith, through his first difficulty, and then encounter more doubt & conflict later on while experiencing trench warfare. Certainly I would have preferred to see this inner conflict over what Mr. Follett, somewhat predictably, chooses to give to Billy: eventual rolls in the hay with Mildred, a somewhat trampy woman with bunny teeth and a heart of gold. (END SPOILER)
(SPOILER) The (mercifully brief) part of the book where Fitz and Bea go to Russia in the middle of the war, and witness Bea's brother's death, is probably THE worst part of this book - absolutely terrible, unbelievable, melodramatic, and ridiculous. (END SPOILER)
Bea, Fitz's Russian Princess wife, is another character who like Guy is flat as a pancake - seemingly just "there", sometimes to be a sulky blond sex toy, and sometimes to provide some witchy conflict for Fitz, but she's not "real" in any sense. I even found her name unbelievable. Her name is Elizaveta but she's called Bea. This nickname makes no sense to me. Isn't Bea short for Beatrice? She's even known as Bea as a child, in Russia.
What can I say I LIKED about Fall of Giants?
1) Grigori Peshkov. I admired everything the author did with Grigori; his war service is outstandingly well written, his interaction in the Russian Revolution is believable, and Grigori is the nucleus to be THE memorable character of this trilogy. If I continue to read the other two books (and I have to say it's still strongly an "if"), I'll do it to see where Mr. Follett takes Grigori.
2) I liked the character of Walter von Ulrich, and mostly liked what the author did with this character - although, it occurred to me that a man who respected England as much as Walter did; had many English friends, and was married to an Englishwoman (even secretly) would have asked to be permanently posted to the Russian front instead of ending up fighting in France, against the British. This request was made by many Germans and Austrians in the same situation.
Writing about Walter's situation reminds me of the really, really big disappointment I had with FALL OF GIANTS. This paragraph will contain SPOILERS - so be warned. OK. There's a scene in the story, just after the battle of the Somme (which began on July 1, 1916 and continued into November, in varying intensity) which takes place in Aberowen, the small Welsh mining town that's the hometown of Billy and Ethel Williams. This scene takes place in late July. Ethel goes home for a brief visit, having relocated to London after her pregnancy and the birth of her child. She stands in a doorway and witnesses a telegraph boy, delivering telegram after telegram to nearly all the families that Ethel has known all her life; telegrams that announce the death of man after man. (Or boy after boy, in some cases.) The women receiving them fall about in agony. It's obvious the author means for this to be THE crucial scene, the set piece, the one that "gets" to the reader, and not incidentally carries Ethel even more strongly into the peace movement.
But, once again, something wasn't sitting right with me, and when I finished the book, I figured out what it was. I consulted UNKNOWN SOLDIERS, by Neil Hanson, and remembered what I'd read before: The class system in Britain, which rigidly kept a person in a particular place in life, carried over in death - even a death in the defense of one's country. Lower class people did not receive telegrams announcing the death of their loved ones. Lower class people were MAILED an official form three or four weeks after a battle and the death of their loved one. Often the only hint that parents or wives had that anything might have happened was the fact that they stopped receiving field postcards or letters from their loved one. Then they had to sit and wait it out, until the army clerks got the names determined; an official form was mailed and the CO had the time (during ongoing battles no less) to write a letter with any details of the death - sympathetically, but systematically.
That's the kind of emotional warfare the class system carried on in Britain during World War I - making a wife or mother wait, maybe three weeks after a battle, in the sudden silence from their man; making them wait in severest anxiety for some word about their fate - because they were "lower class". The upper class family, they got the telegram. It would be equally devastating - but at least they would know within a few days after a battle. Not weeks.
If Mr. Follett didn't care enough (or, didn't research enough) to make that distinction... well ... you have an idea of the quality of this potboiler. I think, in all fairness, FALL OF GIANTS has good moments - readable moments - but when it could have so much better... frankly, reading this book just made me sigh. I am so glad I only borrowed it from the library.
Summary of Fall of Giants (The Century Trilogy)View our Ken Follett feature page. Ken Follett's World Without End was a global phenomenon, a work of grand historical sweep, beloved by millions of readers and acclaimed by critics. Fall of Giants is his magnificent new historical epic. The first novel in The Century Trilogy, it follows the fates of five interrelated families?American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh?as they move through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women's suffrage. Thirteen-year-old Billy Williams enters a man's world in the Welsh mining pits...Gus Dewar, an American law student rejected in love, finds a surprising new career in Woodrow Wilson's White House...two orphaned Russian brothers, Grigori and Lev Peshkov, embark on radically different paths half a world apart when their plan to emigrate to America falls afoul of war, conscription, and revolution...Billy's sister, Ethel, a housekeeper for the aristocratic Fitzherberts, takes a fateful step above her station, while Lady Maud Fitzherbert herself crosses deep into forbidden territory when she falls in love with Walter von Ulrich, a spy at the German embassy in London... These characters and many others find their lives inextricably entangled as, in a saga of unfolding drama and intriguing complexity, Fall of Giants moves seamlessly from Washington to St. Petersburg, from the dirt and danger of a coal mine to the glittering chandeliers of a palace, from the corridors of power to the bedrooms of the mighty. As always with Ken Follett, the historical background is brilliantly researched and rendered, the action fast-moving, the characters rich in nuance and emotion. It is destined to be a new classic. In future volumes of The Century Trilogy, subsequent generations of the same families will travel through the great events of the rest of the twentieth century, changing themselves-and the century itself. With passion and the hand of a master, Follett brings us into a world we thought we knew, but now will never seem the same again. |
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