After sitting on my shelf for nearly a decade, I finally dusted it off and dove into this sweeping tale of cathedral building in medieval England. Sadly, It took me nearly a year to finish reading the novel, not necessarily because it was a slow read but because I actually put the book down half a dozen times and intended to NOT FINISH the book. I'm still not sure what compelled me to power through and finish it, but I picked it back up multiple times and eventually finished it (even though I skipped numerous passages here and there, as I'll explain later in this post).
The first thing I noticed while reading was that even though this was represented as an ambitious book with enormous scope (over 1000 pages covering 50 years of medieval life) the book seemed to take an almost microscopic view of events. Rather than giving us an overarching history of nations, towns or events, Follett picks a handful of characters and lets us walk alongside their day to day life for decades.
As a result of this microscopic view, the world- and character-building felt a little sparse. We encounter a lot of very specific details about a few very small people and events. Even our encounters with the "larger" characters (such as Earls, Archbishops and even Kings) leave those people feeling small. Part of me wonders if this was a conscious choice to act as a sort of metaphor for how insignificant each person is in the grand scheme of things. But as I continued to read, I felt like this was an unintentional consequence of the way the author decided to frame the book and had that the book would have been better served by expanding character and plot development at the expense of losing some of the minutiae.
I did appreciate the small details and found myself enjoying the leisurely exploration of the life of medieval peasants, laborers, priests and lower nobles. After a hundred pages, I wondered about the progression of the overall plot as I understood it (the building of the cathedral) but decided to try and enjoy the journey.
Before long, the book settled into a general cadence of a few different plotlines following a few key characters. The central plot to build the cathedral emerged and allowed the other stories to circulate around it. Jealousy, ambition, greed and aspirations motivated all sorts of action to ebb and flow. While the exact actions were not 100% predictable, the flow of the plot began to take on a semi-predictable rhythm where a disaster or problem would happen which would then be sorted out through some creative or ingenious action that would result in a brief respite before another problem would arise. That's the way life works, to be sure. What started to get tedious was the foreshadowing that made the nature of the events feel predictable.
Lest you feel I am "getting down on the book", let me just say that I generally forgive all of the complaints I voice above. I was still generally enjoying the journey and the details in spite of the loose plot and character tweaks that would have tightened up the narrative. I was still finding numerous historical details interesting and was somewhat invested in a couple of the characters such that I was curious as to their outcomes.
The content of the book that made me stop reading it at least half a dozen times was the way the author decided to portray one of the main villains, Percy Hamleigh. Percy is a minor earl who starts the book as a young man recently rejected in a marriage attempt. He is an angry, violent man that's presented with virtually no redeemable qualities but plenty of reprehensible qualities. In the literary aspect of "show don't tell", Follett shows us just how bad Percy is by having him rape one of the other semi-main characters (the girl who rejected him in marriage). This scene was violent and difficult to read. But then rather than let the scene speak for itself, Follett rehashes it not only in the memories of all characters involved (for it was with an audience) but also by having Percy perform additional rapes multiple times through the book, so much so that it became a plot device and I finally got to where I would skip passages of the book any time Percy seemed to be taking center stage.
I fully acknowledge and understand that rape was an aspect of life in the middle ages (and continues to be a large issue even today). I acknowledge that the first rape scene did a great job of making us find Percy Hamleigh absolutely despicable. I personally would have preferred that scene toned down but I accepted it for what it was and continued on. But when the author continued to present scene after scene with the same (or more) grisly detail, it was no longer acceptable in my mind. He could have written that Percy once again performed the act without having to continue to go into detail about it. The stage had been set. Further scenes should have faded to black rather than continuing to shine a spotlight and push for the close up. It became not only a distraction, but a deterrent for reading and enjoying the story. So much so that I almost didn't finish the book and I went ahead and got rid of the sequels that I had initially thought to read.
At the end of the day, I most enjoyed the interactions and story line of Prior Phillip and his life as a man of God trying to maneuver the nuances of living amid good and wicked people. I found some of the details of architecture and medieval life to be interesting but would have liked some additional narrative depth beyond the microscopic views. I did not enjoy the way the author used rape and violence as a shock tactic rather than a literary device to set the emotion and move on.
Overall, I really wanted to like this book but find I cannot recommend it based on my personal sensibilities.
1.5 out of 5 stars
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