The Pillars of the Earth
by Ken Follett
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Book Reviews of The Pillars of the Earth
Book Review: A Rape Scene that Changed This Fan's Mind about Follett
Summary: 2 Stars
Fond memories: reading Ken Follett novels when I should have been paying attention in algebra class. I used to hold his paperbacks under the desk and give them all my attention, naively certain that the teacher never noticed.
"The Key to Rebecca," "Night over Water," "The Man from St. Petersburg," "Eye of the Needle": even as I was entranced by these books' plots, I marveled at the master who penned them. He wielded a magic wand; he bewitched me into turning those pages until I reached the final page. How did he do it? I wanted to do the same, to hold readers in thrall to a propulsive narrative. No less than sexual seduction, seducing millions of readers is a powerful, Darwinian gift.
Now, these many years later, I teach Follett to my writing students. I encourage them to think about what Follett does to get readers to turn those pages so breathlessly.
"Pillars of the Earth" changed my mind about Follett, so much so that it made me think, long and hard, about all popular entertainment, and my own consumption of it.
A two-dimensional villain tortures another man by lowering that man into a crackling fire. "Pillars" describes the victim's skin blistering, his cries of pain.
This torture scene doesn't contribute any twists or pace to the plot. It doesn't plumb the use of torture in the Middle Ages or today. It doesn't teach me or move me. I'm willing to read a difficult scene, to be taught, to be moved, to be changed, to be made a better person with a richer view of life. Rather, this torture scene in "Pillars" is there for ... entertainment -- the entertainment of "seeing" the torture victim's skin blister.
I found that reading a torture scene that was meant to be entertaining to be a very disturbing experience.
Not long after, there is a rape. The same two-dimensional villain who had tortured the man by roasting him catches a noble virgin alone in a defeated castle. The villain previously murdered her family and friends. He rapes the girl in front of her brother, and then invites his servant to rape the girl, as well.
Plot elements conspire to disempower the girl utterly. She can not attempt to resist; she can not attempt to seek justice.
A rape scene can be handled in any number of ways. If the author did not want to dwell on the rape, but to make the point that it did occur, he could have mentioned it and moved, quickly, on.
If the author wanted to make more of a point of it, he could have dwelled on what the rape did to the victim.
Follett chose to describe the rape from the point of view of the rapist, in a pornographic manner, in a way that would entertain someone who would enjoy such a scene by positioning himself as a vicarious violater. Follett dwells on the physical attractions of the girl, her complete powerlessness, how much she is hurt, and how much the rapist enjoys the rape.
Again, there is no greater point made about women as collateral damage in competitions waged by men for men's prizes, no greater point made about the status of women in medieval society.
After reading that scene, I resigned my figurative "Ken Follet Fan Club" membership card.
I ask myself, is it me that has changed? Were Ken Follett books always this way? I don't know. I haven't gone back to reread the ones I so enjoyed in my youth, before I gave these matters the unavoidable, pained thought I do give them in maturity.
My guess is that Follett, whom I'm sure is a great guy, had no intention of writing a scene that would do anyone any damage, that he was just using his tried-and-true, mix-and-match, sex-danger-crime-punishment elements to create reader involvement and suspense.
I'm saying that for me, given what I, and all too many other women, and too many men, girls, and boys, know about rape, that scene, written the way it was written, struck me as having been handled -- even if only accidentally -- in such a wrong way, that I can never approach a Ken Follett book in the same way.
Book Review: A page-turning epic: great fun, interesting, and exciting
Summary: 5 Stars
This is not a "typical" Ken Follett book - he is often considered an expert in the techno-thriller genre. Instead, it is a much more considered, slower-moving, historical fiction (but not without ample action and evil-doing!). Epic in its scope, it builds slowly from a few characters in low positions and we follow their careers to the upper echelons of power and prestige, at the same time filling in more and more supporting characters. At nearly 1000 pages, there is ample room for lots of characters, and they are never confusing - each is fully formed and clearly delineated. The most impressive aspect is that each character is realistically "selfish" - they all have their own goals and the characters are not arbitrarily divided into "teams." Alliances shift around, people who are colleagues have fallings out and enemies collaborate when it's to mutual advantage.
To cover the plot in detail would not be possible in a short review, but the skeletal outline is very simple. The priory of Kingsbridge has fallen into disrepair and financial distress. Young Philip of Gwynnd, a young, smart and motivated monk, becomes the new prior. After his decrepit cathedral collapses, he hires Tom Builder to build him a new one. Meanwhile, the local earl has been imprisoned on charges of treason, leaving the unstable and brutish Hamleighs as the new lords of the learby lands. They are allied (generally) with the ambitious and secular Bishop Waleran against Philip and his cathedral. The struggle to build a new cathedral is interwoven with an historical civil war; the three-way struggle in Norman England between the Crown, the gentry, and the Church; and with the personal conflicts of the characters.
Of critical importance is the character of Philip. It is fashionable to portray Christian leaders as grasping and manipulative (e.g. Cardinal Richelieu, Cesare Borgia), trying to set up a parallel power structure in competition with the secular monarch. Such men don't even bother to pay lip service to the tenets of Christianity. Bishop Waleran is, obviously, cast from this mold. With Philip, however, Follett creates a true "man of god" - intellegent, devote, and talented. To Philip, the end never justifies the means, and God's laws are sacrosanct. He is not pedantic or does not have a "holier than thou" attitude - his response to an enemy who had betrayed him but then later fallen on hard times is to give him wine and bread, and welcome him back to the monastary. When the Archbishop's men proclaim a miracle, he immediately retorts that the event is "unexplained, but that doesn't necessarily make it a miracle."
When writing about the Dark Ages, it is easy to confuse superstition and ignorance with intellegence. Follett does not fall into this mistake, much to his credit. He also resists the temptation to make sly jokes about the state of knowledge (for example, he states that men bathe "twice a year," and presents it merely as a fact of life). Thus, we are drawn into the life and times of 12th-Century England and become immersed in the lives of the characters. I am no expert on Norman England, but from what I remember from my long-ago course on the History of England it seems accurate (certainly more accurate than, say, the TV miniseries "The Tudors"). Several of the characters are real, e.g., King Stephen, Empress Matilda (whose name is changed to Maud in the book, presumably to avoid confusion with Stephen's wife Matilda), Robert of Gloucester, Hugh de Moreville, etc. A cursory knowledge of events in the wider Norman world probably adds a little to the experience of reading the book, but it's certainly not necessary.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It is graphically violent in a number of places, somewhat crude in others (after all, the average "blue-collar worker" in the 12th Century didn't have much education!), but it is a great read overall.
Book Review: Simply Awful
Summary: 1 Stars
I know I'm going to be in the minority here, but this is truly one of the worst books I have ever read. I came so close to throwing the book across the room on several occasions, and ended up skipping through many pages just to get to the final and not too surprising finish.
The characters were flat and lifeless and seemed to have been transplanted from the 20th century into medieval England. The book was rife with unnecessary profanity that in no way enhanced the storyline and obscene gratuitous sex (I mean how many times did William have to rape someone to prove that he was a really really bad guy?). I noticed that at least one other reviewer commented that this book was required reading in his child's school, which if you are a parent I would recommend you take a good look at this book and perhaps take issue with your school district. As an adult I was shocked at the language and violence in this book, and find it totally inappropriate for a child and/or young adult.
I also noticed comments about the historical accuracy and research that must have been involved in writing this book. If that is so, it must only be in regards to the building of the cathedral and the civil war between Stephen and Maud. As for the rest, I must disagree, I have read many well written and researched books of medieval times (thank you Sharon Kay Penman and Elizabeth Chadwick for such awesome reads), and I was infuriated on numerous discrepancies in this book. Examples and anyone may correct me if I'm mistaken as I am not a history major:
* Aliena is frequently described as having long, curling loose flowing hair. Women in those days wore their hair braided and covered, it being quite scandalous for any man other than her husband or lover to see it loose.
* After the attack on the castle, and the imprisonment of their father Aliena and Richard are allowed to live alone in the castle with only the steward? I doubt that the king would punish the children so for the sins of their fathers, and most likely would have been made wards of the king until they reached their majority. This was most desirable as the king could then skim the proceeds off the estates and funnel them to the crown's use. Sometimes a king would give ward ship to another party as a reward for service, etc.
* Young boys of the noble class were typically sent to another noble household to be raised and educated, first as squires and then trained in that household as a knight. What on earth was a teenaged Richard doing living at home?
* Much was made of William's warhorse. These were formidable beasts that were not easily handled by strangers. Yet Aliena and Richard were able to not only saddle the warhorse, but to get right on and ride it? I don't think so.
* The English nobility of that period were Norman French and did not speak the language of the peasant class. So how did Aliena manage to not only communicate with them, but could set up a successful business in that atmosphere?
I could go on with more examples if I had remembered to take notes, but there were many similar instances to this throughout the book. All I can say is that if you want to read a very well written and researched book on this period, please see Sharon Kay Penman's When Christ and His Saints Slept and Time and Chance (Ballantine Reader's Circle). JMO.
Book Review: An Epic Tale of Epic Proportions
Summary: 5 Stars
If you think that that the history of the Middle Ages is the story of serfs serving on feudal manors with friendly monks as guides and chivalrous knights defending the honor of maidens fair as they go off to fight bin the battle of good verses evil, then don't read THE PILLARS OF THE EARTH, Ken Follett's epic tale of the building of a cathedral in the English town of Kingsbridge. It will shatter everything you believe about the Middle Ages. If you enjoy an intriguing historical novel with enough fiction to be fiction but enough accurate history to be believable, then THE PILLARS OF THE EARTH is a great pick.
The novel is filled with intriguing characters. Tom is a mason who dreams of being a master builder of a cathedral. Philip is a prior of a small monastery who unwittingly is elected the prior of the rundown Kingsbridge Priory. Lady Aliena is the lively and intelligent daughter of the Earl of Shiring who seems to become stronger as she faces tragedy. Ellen lives in the forest and seems to have a past. She also has a son Jack and later marries Tom after his wife dies. William Hamleigh is a young man who is madly in love with Aliena but when he's snubbed his entire world changes and we discover he has anger issues that lead to his destruction. Waleran Bigod is a scheming bishop who can control everything but the power of Philip's innate goodness. Alfred is Tom's son who has faults his father cannot see who resents Tom's stepson Jack who is probably the son Tom desired. All of these lives intersects hen the monastery church at Kingsbridge burns to the ground and a new church is built in its place.
The novel is filled with some actual historic details--the civil war between King Stephen and Empress Maud and the eventual coronation of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Henry's troubles with Tomas Beckett also come into play in the novel. The novel also depicts with great accuracy the brutal life that so many lived at this time though we also see that the world is changing as new philosophies, ideas in mathematics and architecture and government begin to surface. Follett also allows the characters to live and speak as people of the time. We get a medieval worldview from the characters who are people from their time so we see affairs of church and state, issues of right and wrong, the reality of Heaven and Hell, from the point of view of people from the Middle Ages.
THE PILLARS OF THE EARTH is a novel of considerable length, but it is a somewhat quick read, especially for an epic novel. It's a novel filled with minute details, especially architectural details (as someone fascinated with church buildings, this is a plus for me). However, the novel's greatest strength novel would be the characters. Like a Dickens' novel, each character is essential and each interacts with the other. Take away one character and it's a different book. Very few are one dimensional. They're as human as human can be. They're imperfect, they have triumphs but they also stumble. When they triumph readers are happy, when they die, readers feel a sense of loss. We meet characters we care about and enter into a different time, riveted as we read each page and are transported back in time. This is a wonderful novel and one that isn't easily forgotten. I hope the sequel WORLD WITHOUT END is just as masterful.
Book Review: Have patience, it's worth it
Summary: 4 Stars
I received this book as a gift, and I was not terribly impressed with it at first. With some encouragement from the gift-giver, I continued on. The story was lovely, and it was worth the almost 1,000 pages of effort. It is an informed and well-written story with some very interesting characters. There are some great morality points, too. You have your standard bibilical allusion winding through the novel. Follet was careful, though, to make it subtle, and I appreciated that. It would have been too easy to tell a Sunday school Bible lesson while talking about the building of a cathedral.
Having read the book, I am glad that I persevered, but I had some serious problems with this book, too. First, there are some really graphic scenes of sex and violence that just were not necessary. Of course, this book is about a period of time in 12th Century England called "the Anarchy," which saw its fair share of graphic scenes. I was very disturbed by the scenes, though, and I wish the author had a more graceful way of writing them. I think Follett went a little overboard with the architectural descriptions, too. I believe he probably was greatly inspired by the cathedrals he saw while doing research for the novel and wanted to share it with his readers. That is obvious with in the verbosity of his descriptions. I couldn't visualize what he was describing, though, so I was lost in much of the master builder's musings over his designs. Overall, the characters were good. It seems, though, that Follett spent a great deal of time thinking about his heroes and left the rest to develop themselves. The women in the novel are especially odd to me. They are your basic "strong women" as imagined by a male writer. I have never met a woman like Follett describes. I doubt he has either, but it seems like he wants to. The evil characters are also too much. One example is the man who can't get aroused unless he is with a child and only if he hurts her. It is just too easy to hate a character like that. Once again, I wish there had been more grace.
Having said that, I think there are some great strengths to the book, too. Although the characters are at times too much to be believed, I loved the fact that we were able to watch them grow, learn, and age. We watch their lives over the course of almost 40 years, and we experience with them all the great events of their lives. Follett did a good job with that. In fact, I think he wrote the characters better as they aged. I also loved the twisting and turning the story takes. So as not to give anything away, I will only say that the characters all experience some ups and downs in their lives. Just when you think Follett has said all he could say, a new story begins. Still, he connects them seamlessly. My favorite part of the story is the ending. I sometimes get very angry with authors of long books who write anticlimactic endings. This is not one of those.
If you are willing to give this book some time and effort, it is really an enjoyable read and an interesting look at possibly the most turbulent time in English history.