Book Review: The Pillars of the Earth

 

© 1989 by Ken Follett

 

Finally! A semi-bucket list item crossed off with satisfaction.

The Pillars of the Earth has been on my radar for over twenty years. Many is the time I perused a library or book store shelf and plucked it off for closer inspection. But the novel is a hefty investment and not for the light-hearted. Recognizing this, I kicked it down the road far too many times than I should have.

This was the first book I purchased after we moved down here to Texas last July. And still it sat on my bookshelf for 14 months! Yet at the tail end of September I took the plunge, and was well-rewarded for it. My paperback copy has 983 pages, in six Parts plus a Prologue. It took me exactly 40 days to wind my way through (though I did concurrently read two much shorter books and a couple of plays by ancient Greek writer Aeschylus). That’s just less than 25 pages a day, but in truth when I did read it I found it difficult to put down.

The Pillars of the Earth is a deceptively simple tale of a noble goal – the building of a cathedral during the Middle Ages. The action – yes, it’s a story with plenty of action – takes place over the span of 40 years, with that prologue happening 12 years earlier (which sets up the backstories of two major characters, slowly revealed over the course of the tale). Sure, there’s lots of architectural exposition tossed in, but man did I not anticipate the amount of political intrigue – often deadly political intrigue – involved in constructing a House of God.

England at this time (the early-to-mid 1100s) is torn by civil war, leading local lords, barons, and earls to rampage without consequence throughout the countryside. The clergy stands as a bulwark against this lawlessness; that is, the clergy that is not corrupt and willing participants. The peasants are starving, the rents are too high, outlaws fill the woodlands, and life is cheap, nasty, and short.

But a man named Brother Phillip, abbot of Kingsbridge, wants to build a glorious cathedral to rival the masterpieces beginning to dot the continent.

The Pillars of the Earth, and my hand

There’s a cast of about twenty regular characters throughout the novel, mostly salt of the earth peasant types with a sprinkling of royals to varying degrees and a handful of religious brothers. Some are nice and decent, pleasant chaps and ladies you’d like to spend an evening with eating roasted hare out in the forest. Some are a bit nastier, others quite nasty. All the characters, however, are a thousand percent real, multi-dimensional, filled with hopes and dreams and desire beyond filling that belly with warm rabbit meat.

Of the protagonists I identified with Brother Phillip the most. A touching backstory, a compelling rationale for building this cathedral, and a simple man of the cloth, putting his faith wholeheartedly into the thing which most of us do not. I also liked Tom the Builder, the man Phillip saves from starvation to design and construct his new church.

But I think The Pillars of the Earth shines best in its villains – two of the worst I’ve read this side of a George R. R. Martin novel. One’s the brains, one’s the brawn. There’s young William of Hamleigh, who attains earlhood though trickery and deceit and the entire surrounding towns must suffer for it over many, many years, and who nearly destroys Kingsbridge itself in one of his rages. And then there’s oily Bishop Waleran, Phillip’s sworn enemy, who will stop at nothing to keep the cathedral from being built – and I mean nothing. True to the aforementioned Mr. Martin, these two villains and their henchmen subject our heroes to a never-ending battering ram of brutality time and time and time again.

It’s a very emotionally wringing written novel. There’s GOOD – characters falling in love immediately; characters falling ever so slowly in love over many months; the spiritual triumph of good over evil, which involves the getting up time and again after being knocked down; and many extremely clever (perhaps too clever, given the time period) solutions to outwit the schemes of evil foes. There’s BAD – not one but two brutal rapes; pillaging and murder; two hangings; a woman’s death in childbirth; a baby left out to die in the cold (though it’s rescued by a man of God).

There’s a sequel which I may check out in a year or two. Not sure. As good as the novel is, it did take something out of me. It was an ordeal, but a worthy ordeal, much like the constructing of a cathedral in England in the 1100s. I hope to become a better writer having read it.

Grade: solid A.