“Dear Mr. Follet, I would like to introduce you to the pronoun. Pronouns can be used in place of proper nouns to make a sentence or paragraph flow more smoothly.”
Pillars of the Earth was a darn good story. It spans many years and follows the trials and tribulations involved in building a cathedral in the 12th century. Call it historical fiction. For the most part, the characters are the “unimportant” people in history. Yeah, there’s a bishop and an earl, and a few kings make minor appearances, as the story is set against the backdrop of English civil war. But the real heroes of the story are the common folk: the builders, merchants, priests and peasants. In my experience with these types of books, focusing on ordinary people is fairly uncommon.
I liked it. I wanted to know how the story ended. But the writing itself annoyed me. Usually a good book will draw me in and i don’t want to do anything else, but this one kept me looking for excuses to do other things. The language just wasn’t very engaging.
Some examples of issues i had with the book:
1) The underuse of pronouns was extremely distracting and made me feel a little like i was being talked down to. I couldn’t sit and read for long periods b/c i would get annoyed by the language.
2) The story went on a bit too long. I felt as Prior Phillip did – that the damn cathedral would never be finished. And naves, transepts, chanceries, clerestories and buttresses?? With nearly one thousand pages, a few of them could have been devoted to a better explanation, or maybe some diagrams. I still don’t know what a chancery or a nave is.
3) There were really only two types of characters in the book – good and evil. Everything was black & white. Nothing was controversial and the characters did not grow or change much, even though the book spanned several decades.
4) The characters were sometimes indistinguishable from one another. For example, Tom Builder was who he was. And then he died. And then Jack Jackson took his place, and he was EXACTLY THE SAME CHARACTER.
5) Inconsistency in characters – there were several characters who were described as big & dumb and not that clever. But then later they would be sly & cunning. I think i would have let that slide if it had been one character, but there were like 5 characters like that! And i could never tell what to expect from them. Will they be dumb-witted or clever in this chapter?
6) The evil people were extremely evil, but their motives and actions never seemed fully believable to me. Earl William burned a town to the ground and got away with it. His reasoning was that earls could do whatever they wanted to the people they ruled. Then later he got demoted to sherrif. And he tried to arrest the new earl for killing a man (who by the way was trying to stab him). Not that you expect evil people to be consistent when it doesn’t suit them. But actions didn’t seem to be based on personality – it was based on sending the plot in a particular direction. Which brings me to…
7) Some of the plot points were extremely contrived. There were a bit too many coincidences. Secondly, characters would decide to do things that didn’t make any sense. This would create conflict, and then it could be resolved. Like when Aliena decides that she has to leave the man she loves and has been with for 10 years, because she can’t marry him (she technically already has a husband and the church won’t anull the marriage). Really? After 10 years, NOW you are going to leave? But then the technical husband shows up and starts a fight and gets killed, and now we can all breathe easier b/c she won’t have to leave after all b/c now the church will let her marry the man she has been with all this time and who is the father of her children. That whole thing just seemed extremely forced.
8 ) I thought a countess was the wife of a count. Apparently she is also the wife of an earl.
3 of 5 stars. Most of my complaints are about the writing and the character development. The story itself was quite good.
Tags: book club, books
