The Pillars of the Earth
by Ken Follett
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Book Reviews of The Pillars of the Earth
Book Review: I was sad that the book had to end
Summary: 4 Stars
I felt passionate about all the characters: I loved them or I hated them, no in between. I love how none of the characters were all good or all bad; they all had their weaknesses and flaws. So I was mostly satisfied with the characterization, but a bit disappointed that he didn't go into more detail with certain characters and he didn't really write from their points of view; Richard and Ellen, for instance.
The book was rarely slow-moving or boring. I loved it from the introduction and could not put it down. It struck many chords in me, and felt like an emotional roller coaster. The book isn't just a love story, but there are lovers in it and their stories are engrossing.
If you are very sensitive to gore and rape, you may not want to read this book. There is a lot of death, and most of it is bloody. There is also a lot of rape. I think Follett took it a bit far with the amount of rape in the book, and with explicit sex. I don't have a problem reading about these things, but I think most people might. So, reader beware. If you like that kind of stuff, you'll love this book. Follett should write porn in his spare time.
What bothered me was that after a while it just got sort of predictable, all the obstacles Follett gave his characters. Seemed a bit excessive, but still worth the read.
I love historical novels, and Follett did an impressive job of setting the atmosphere. I recommend this book to anyone who can handle 1,000 pages. I was sad when it ended, and I'm sure I'll read it second time.
Book Review: 900 Pages, not much to show for it
Summary: 3 Stars
This was an easy read, all 900+ pages, because there is not much there. The characters are one dimensional and the plot very simplistic and contrived. I was attracted to the book by the promise of stories of building cathedrals, the hope of stories from the work site of cathedral building. I wanted to get into the characters of people who build cathedrals, of how the building process was organized. How the lives of builders intertwined with the building of cathedrals.
I kept waiting and waiting and waiting. Maybe 10% to 15% "touches" on cathedral building. The rest is on the level of a soap opera or telenovela built around the hook of building a cathedral. Shallow and a bit tawdry at times. Now I enjoy shallow and tawdry, especially when I've chosen a book (or a TV show or a Movie) because it is shallow and tawdry. I went into this book with higher expectations.
I would think that Tom Builder could have been developed into a very interesting character, as well as could several other characters. Unfortunately characters only enter the story as vignettes. Maybe in the 12th century people really were simply shadows of human beings. The same thing happens with history. A bit here. Scrap there. Always the potential to go somewhere with the story lines. Always the seed of an idea, but never the bloom of the flower.
Inspite of this I kept turning the pages and finished the blasted thing! 900+ pages! I should have quite at 600. Did I re-set my expectations too low? I don't think I want to go there.
Book Review: The best long read!
Summary: 5 Stars
I spend lots of time in churches and houses of worship and am often amazed at the magnificance of the structures. However I have also observed the issues from the pulpit to the door that make some of the pillars unstable. I don't know what I was expecting but I was certainly pleasantly surprised!
This was one of the best long novels that I have read in a long time. I picked it up whenever I had a spare moment and was just fascinated by the historical references as well as the movement between ranks of royalty and clergy in the Medieval period. The various tensions between the characters as evenly matched with the tension in the structure of the cathedral's integral parts. It was a wordy examination of how when the head is not correct the entire body is off kilter.
Some of the coicidences seemed contrived but not the point of distraction.
I loved that Ellen, who seems in the beginning a trivial player is the character who pulls all of the unanswered questions and tension together at the very end.
I really felt like I had been transported 10 centuries backward to the English country side. I was in Spain and France as well! I could smell all of the smells, taste all of the cooking, feel the weather, see the doom and gloom of a cathedral lacking windows, and God knows that the erotica between Tom/Ellen Jack/Alaina was just lovely without being lewd. The violence was really violent and the scenario where Thomas was slain and his brains spilled was a bit over the top.
This was masterful!!
Book Review: Thunderously Diasppointing
Summary: 1 Stars
If this book could have lived up to the promise of its cover design, it would have been literature; as it is it's a cartoonish artless mess. It has all the credibility and narrative tension of a Redwall novel, and none of that series' character development. Peppered with false dramatic moves and momentary conflicts that go nowhere and are quickly resolved, it grows bored with its own subject, architecture, at moments when it should be most clear, and devotes pages to distracting side stories (I was skimming by page 75). At its best it most right along; the writing is transparent, which is a kind way of saying without style, grace, or flare (and is thus no delight to read but neither is it a chore) but at least it tells its story. However at it's worst it becomes preposterous, as when central character Tom's wife dies and he abandons his newborn son, and literally within minutes he's seduced in the middle of the woods by a mysterious beautiful forest maiden who lives a lot like Bilbo Baggins. Follett's narrative style is loaded with contemporary terminology and his characters speak as if this were a Monty Python sketch. I got the feeling Follett was making a play for Umberto Eco status but ended up Douglas Preston in sackcloth. Everything interesting about this book can be had from David Macaulay's "Cathedral The Story of its Construction," the illustrated paperback. I was genuinely disappointed; it was like opening a leather-bound edition of Shakespeare only to find the plays draw out in stick figures.Book Review: KUDOS TO OPRAH: ESCAPE REALITY
Summary: 5 Stars
There is an undeniably great quality to Follett's masterpiece "The Pillars of the Earth": his uncanny ability to create a story and characters so real that their lives are powerful enough to seem a part of your own life's memory bank.
The novel details an epic battle that juxtaposes Good and Evil, in a loop of battles that no one wins entirely until the final battle in the last chapters.
Religion plays a major role in the novel as the main theme is the building of a cathedral in the town of Kingsbridge. I am not a pious individual but the character of Prior Phillip and his fellow monks gave me a new perspective on men dedicated enough to forgo many of the worlds freedoms and pleasures for their love of God. Follett also writes of the duality in the ascetic lifestyle through the character of Waleran Bigod, a father who believes his end justifies God's mean; which becomes a constant barrage on the building of the Kingsbridge cathedral.
Through the novel even the presence of God appears tactile as the reader wonders what God's will is, and is challenged to keep their faith in the paradigm "goodness always prevails." In essence God is a metaphor for the book's author who delicately challenges and evolves the characters through thirty plus years of joys and tribulations.
WARNING: DO NOT plan to read this 900+ page novel during a busy time in your life, it will keep you up late at night. :)
My highest recommendation, read and enjoy!