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The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett

I finally finished reading this behemoth of a book this weekend, after several months’ labor. And no, it didn’t take me so long to finish because of the length of the book; I could only bear to read it for so long before getting bored or annoyed, and putting it down to go knit or watch a movie or something. It’s sad, because I love the time period (12th century England) and the subject matter (the building of a Gothic cathedral over almost 4 decades); but I found Follett’s tone frequently condescending, and his characters and conflicts one-dimensional. His villains are almost cartoonish in their single-minded desire to ruin and/or kill the “do-gooders”; his protagonists, while slightly more complex emotionally, nevertheless change very little over the course of decades. As long as the book is, one would think Follett could spend more time showing his characters’ emotions and motivations through action and dialogue; instead, he often states bluntly what they are feeling, which over-simplifies them, and makes me, the reader, feel somewhat cheated. I also don’t appreciate getting hammered with reminders of events from the characters’ pasts, when they were major events in the book. My memory (and, I like to think, that of most people) is not that short. It reminded me of some of those annoying reality shows that play flashbacks of things that had aired just a few minutes previously.

The plot is more of the same. The protagonists attempt to build a cathedral, while the villains attempt to thwart their every effort at success and prosperity. And you know that every time the villains attempt or manage to perpetrate some misdeed–preventing the use of a quarry, burning the cathedral’s village and market, etc. etc.–the protagonists will come up with an idea either to thwart the attack or rise from the ashes better off than before, all without sinking to the level of their enemies. This sort of plot device works reasonably well in a shorter novel, but it happens so repeatedly in The Pillars of the Earth that there is no tension in the conflict, because you immediately anticipate the outcome.

So, sadly, not a great effort. I understand Ken Follett typically writes spy or suspense novels, so perhaps he was out of his comfort zone here, but I doubt I’ll pick up another book of his.

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, by Stephen King

To cleanse my palate after finishing The Pillars of the Earth, I immediately picked up The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, a slender, somewhat unusual outing for King that I gulped down in the course of one afternoon. I say unusual because the book focuses entirely on a single character, Trisha, a 9-year old girl who finds herself lost in the woods of Maine and New Hampshire for over a week. King does an excellent job of describing the changes to her physical, emotional, and mental state as the days pass. Her biggest comfort is her hero, Tom Gordon, the Red Sox closing pitcher, whose imagined (and later, hallucinated) presence gives her the resolve and the “ice water” to survive sickness, starvation, biting insects, deceptive swamps, and the “special thing” in the woods that she comes to know as the God of the Lost. Divided into innings, the book is full of baseball references, but thanks to Jeremy, I at least know a bit more about the Red Sox than most other baseball teams, and it never got to the point of being off-putting. I very much enjoyed this little book.

I have been reluctant to post pictures recently because there were some photos of Loki still on our digital camera that I couldn’t bear to look at yet. This weekend I finally got it over with, and took some photos of a few current and finished knitting projects.

You Guessed It…

…more sock news. I posted separately about the Mother’s Day socks a few days ago, so I won’t show those again here. But I did finish my modified Diagonal Rib socks as well.

It was an easy pattern to remember, once I had worked it out for my necessary stitch count, and added a lot of visual interest to these socks.

Expect to see more socks in the future. I have a friend temporarily living in my home theater room, and his cat is way too interested in larger knitting projects, so I have been restricted to socks for TV knitting. For my next trick, I am thinking of making a pair of Broadripple socks for myself, perhaps adapted to toe-up.

Skye Vest

I’ve continued to work on my Dad’s cabled vest, though I had a bit of a set-back, wondering why the ribbing on the front piece kept measuring out larger than the back, even with the same number of rows. Eventually I realized that the ribbing was supposed to be knit with smaller needles than the body (duh), so I have restarted the front.

At any rate, here is a close-up image of the stitch pattern. The dark blue yarn makes a decent photo difficult to come by, but I think this one is pretty close.

Polka Purl Dots

I don’t think I have mentioned this project before, but back in April I started making the Polka Purl Dots vest, from the Spring 2004 edition of Interweave Knits, using some very light silvery Dale Kolibri. I’m quite pleased with the way the top is coming out so far… hopefully it will be worth the trouble of working with this very splitty (but otherwise lovely) yarn.

The pattern is a rather complex one, knit all in one piece to the armholes. It requires you to keep track of the textural pattern while working decreases at each end and simultaneous waist shaping at each of the two false seams. Since the picture below was taken, I’ve started the armhole and neck shaping for the back piece, and hopefully kept sufficient notes on where I left off in the front shaping to pick that back up afterwards. So, not a pattern for the faint of heart, but it has been an enjoyable challenge so far.

And now for a seamless segue…

Since the yarn-attacking kitty has kept me and my knitting away from the TV except for an hour or two in the evenings, I have been catching up on my reading while I knit. This weekend I finished Good Omens, an apocalyptic British comedy by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. It was so full of jokes and puns that I’m actually not sure I caught them all. In a nutshell, I’d have to say it was a bit like the movie Dogma—if Dogma had been more funny, less crude, and British, anyway.

I also read Across the Nightingale Floor, the first book in a trilogy called Tales of the Otori, by Lian Hearn. It is set in an imagined world akin to feudal Japan (think Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon on an epic scale) and tells the story of a young man, Takeo, whose entire village is wiped out by the powerful warlord Iida for their religious beliefs. Takeo is rescued and taken in by Shegiru, a nobleman of the neighboring Otori clan, who has his own vendetta to settle with Iida. The book weaves revenge and political intrigue together with Takeo’s struggle to reconcile the disparate parts of his nature: his religious upbringing, Otori adoption, and blood ties to a secretive Ninja-like guild called the Tribe. A very interesting book and a quick read; I am looking forward to reading the rest of the trilogy.

All I can say is, wow. Actually, I can say a lot more than that, but will try to hold my praise to an appropriate length. An Instance of the Fingerpost was a masterpiece of historical fiction, masquerading at first glance in the more humble guise of murder mystery. I first picked it up having heard favorable comparisons with Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose and Caleb Carr’s Alienist, always good signs in my opinion. I think the comparisons are accurate, though Pears’ writing is perhaps more readily accessible than that of Eco, whose work is scholarly enough to be off-putting in places; and the scope of Fingerpost is ultimately epic in scale compared with Carr’s serial murder story.

Fingerpost has, at its surface, a very simple premise. An Oxford don is murdered via arsenic, and his former servant-girl is condemned and executed for it as a result. The question of her guilt or innocence at first seems to be the focus of the book, which is written in four sections, each with a different narrator presenting his perception of the events leading up to her hanging. Yet as the narratives progress, and we learn more and more of the political and religious issues of Commonwealth and Restoration England, we slowly discover that there is much more at stake in the book than the fate of a mere servant-girl.

I loved the book right off the bat for the immersive quality of the narrative. Without resorting to the use of archaic grammar, the reader is entirely absorbed into the time period and world views of the four narrators, who come from a wide range of backgrounds and professions. The first is Marco da Cola, an Italian gentleman, a Catholic and ersatz medical student, arriving poor in Oxford as a result of problems with his father’s merchant holdings. The second is Jack Prestcott, an impoverished young nobleman who seeks to disprove the conviction that his father had been a traitor to the crown. Third is John Wallis, a priest and mathematician best known for his skills at cryptography. Finally, the book concludes with the account of Anthony Wood, an archivist and historian who draws together the intricate threads of the mystery in a way that is completely satisfying and almost miraculous.

Fingerpost is chock full of historical characters discussing and participating in important events in England’s political and religious history. It contains the conspiracy counterpart that I relish in this type of literature, without resorting to so-called secret societies or a need to conflate historical activities with contemporary ones. Finally, the story expands beyond its origins in historical murder mystery to such an epic scope that I am still processing some of the revelations at its end. It is the sort of book that one could read many times, and feel more and more satisfied with the conclusion each time the last page is turned. Yet amid the large-scale intrigue, the book’s themes are so well-grounded in the narrative that we still emerge with an acute sense of individual characters affecting the shape of history.

I hesitate to say much more in this review, fearing that I will say too much and spoil the experience for those who are interested in reading it. Perhaps the most helpful way I can conclude is to say that while I adored such books as The Name of the Rose, The Alienist, and Katherine Neville’s The Eight, and enjoyed others like The Dante Club, The Flanders Panel, or Angels and Demons, in my opinion, An Instance of the Fingerpost has the various strengths of those books and none of the weaknesses. I would highly recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in either mysteries or English history, and can only suggest that you set aside a good chunk of time to read it with as little interruption as possible.

Some of you may know that I have become very interested in bookbinding and repair in recent months, thanks to the opportunity I have had since spring of doing bookmending for Hatfield Library. I took a basic repair workshop at Portland State University this past August, and have read several books on the subject, but was eager for further advancement in my studies.

This past month, I began Saturday sessions with Max Marbles, a local bookbinder who works out of Mission Mill in Salem. I’ve learned quite a lot already, even just through watching him work, that I am beginning to apply to my library mending. This past weekend I got to see him do blind embossing on leather for a title onlay, and helped do cosmetics on the pastedowns and flys of a book damaged by a previous strapping tape “repair.”

The previous weekend I got to make my very first book, and I finally have a photo of it. This is a single-signature sewn binding with 80 pages (40 leaves, 20 folios) with a simple cloth cover. I did everything myself: cutting, folding, trimming, and punching the leaves; laminating the cover and fly with marbled paper, and dying the bookcloth to the shade I wanted; and sewing the binding. It’s just a small book (measures about 3.5″x5″), but sturdy and functional, and—I think—lovely in its simplicity.

As my studies with Max progress, I may be making several other small books with more complex constructions, to familiarize myself thoroughly with the anatomy of a book, so stay tuned for updates on the bookbinding front.

The saga of Sir Charles and Harriet Byron proceeds in the fifth volume much in the same vein as those previous, though things definitely begin to go Harriet’s way.

The beginning of the volume sees Sir Charles in Italy, reunited with Clementina and Jeronymo, beginning the mental healing process of the former, and the physical healing process of the latter. Both make significant improvement, and just when Sir Charles seems beyond Harriet’s reach, Clementina makes a resolution that begins to free him up. Sir Charles returns to England, to the dismay of much of the Porretta family, and begins a (very) tentative courtship of Harriet.

I’m not sure how this book can possibly go on for two more volumes. I have just started the sixth volume, and it appears from the contents that Sir Charles and Harriet will be married by its end. That leaves an entire book for the wrap-up of the Clementina thread (whether by her death, marriage, or sequestering), and other more minor threads: the ultimate fate of Sir Hargrave and Harriet’s other disappointed suitors; the probable marriages, etc. of various friends and family of the couple; possible deaths of various elderly relatives; and the conclusion of a variety of Sir Charles’s good deeds; most of which I can’t muster interest in.

Finally, an interesting morsel from the book on casinos. Not being particularly interested in gambling, I don’t know the origin of the name or the institution, but came across a footnote in this volume that made me wonder. Here it is, for your contemplation:

“The Casino at Bologna is a fine apartment, illuminated every night, for the entertainment of the gentlemen and ladies of the city, and whomsoever they please to introduce. There are card-tables; and waiters attend with chocolate, coffee, ice. The whole expense is defrayed by twelve men of the first quality, each in turn taking his month.”

Alias Grace is the third Margaret Atwood book I have read. After loving The Handmaid’s Tale and hating The Robber Bride, I was uncertain whether I wanted to venture further into Atwood’s oeuvre, but Alias Grace fell into my hands used and with a high recommendation. I decided to give it a try, and I found it a fascinating read.

This book covers territory far removed from those of the other two books mentioned: it is a work of historical fiction based on a real convicted Canadian murderess, Grace Marks, who lived in Ontario in the mid-nineteenth century. Atwood’s version of the story is told from several perspectives, mostly from those of Grace and an alienist, Dr. Simon Jordan, who hopes to determine whether Grace is innocent or guilty, sane or insane. Intermixed with their narratives are letters between Dr. Jordan and others, and quotations from contemporary accounts of the events surrounding the murders of Nancy Montgomery and Thomas Kinnear, including Grace’s own confession. Up until the last, Atwood dangles questions before us: Is Grace truly amnesiac about the murders themselves? Was she out of her mind, or acting as a cold, calculating, jealous woman? Was she dragged into passive participation by James McDermott, who was quickly hanged for the murders? Was she acted on by other, unseen forces?

The narrative proceeds slowly, but with a richness of detail that lent it authenticity beyond the contemporary documentation of the crime. It was particularly interesting to me because I know very little about Canadian history, and Atwood’s narratives bring it to life. My biggest complaint would have to be the closure of Dr. Jordan’s story-line; he exits abruptly, and without closure in his relationship to Grace, because of a peripheral event in his own narrative. Most of the questions proposed by Atwood in the course of the book were left unanswered, but that doesn’t bother me so much, since several possibilities were hinted at—one of which is subtly indicated by the title—and the guilt of the actual Grace Marks, remained a point of contention even after her eventual pardon. This was a fascinating, beautifully written book, and it is one I would recommend.

In order to write a review, or even a summary of this volume, I was forced to look back through the contents to recall what important events happened. I was relieved to discover that I was not mistaken in thinking that not much really happened over the course of these 350-odd pages. It begins with the conclusion of Dr. Bartlett’s transmission of Clementina’s plight. This is followed by a number of minor domestic events: Sir Charles orchestrates the reunion of his good friend Beauchamp with his father and step-mother, and set up seemingly several dozen weddings, including the wedding of his own sister Charlotte to Lord G—-. The latter relationship is interesting in large part because it is in some ways an extension of that of Anna Howe and Mr. Hickman, who had not yet married at the end of Clarissa. Charlotte is clearly at fault much of the time, but I have no doubt that she will improve herself by the end of the book, under the angelic influences of her brother’s and Miss Byron’s relationship.

The biggest revelation occurs in the very end of the book, when Sir Charles returns to Bologna in a renewed attempt to restore Jeronymo’s body and Clementina’s mind to health, by his visit and the assistance of an English doctor. In the last few pages, we hear from Sir Charles’s own pen an admission of his attachment to Harriet, which has been strongly hinted at by all parties but never confessed by the man himself.

Having racked my brain to think of something more interesting than a synopsis to say about this volume, I am at a loss. So I’ll just post the link to the text and leave it at that:

Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4

Onward and upward.

In finishing the third volume of Sir Charles, I have only a few notes to make. First of all, I was fortunate to be directed to another online version of Sir Charles Grandison, at Blackmask. This version does seem to be somewhat different than the version I am using, but it has saved me some degree of typing time. My version of this volume should be on Project Gutenberg before too long; I’ll provide the link when it is.

As far as the contents of this volume, the main plot of Harriet’s concealed love for Sir Charles continues. She has the wholehearted support of Sir Charles’s sisters, as well as her own family, but continues to feel herself unworthy of his attention. There are some developments in the story of Emily Jervois, Sir Charles’s ward, but the main event is the discovery of Sir Charles’s Italian affair with Clementina della Porretta, an aristocratic young woman from Bologna. As it might be imagined, it is revealed (largely through a series of excerpts from Sir Charles’s previous letters to Dr. Bartlett) that his intentions were entirely honorable, and possibly founded as much—or more—on compassion as love. The revelation (naturally) causes Harriet to take Clementina’s part more than her own.

I found the most interesting aspect of this volume to be the strong references to Shakespeare. Sir Charles first knows Clementina as a sort of voluntary English “tutor,” and Clementina specifically refers to both Hamlet and Twelfth Night, even quoting from the latter. Further than this, however, Clementina’s story seems to have many purposeful parallels to that of Ophelia in Hamlet: torn between her duty to family and religion and her love for the foreign “heretic” Sir Charles, Clementina goes gently mad. Other specific references to Hamlet: Clementina’s parents, on several occasions, arrange for Sir Charles to speak with her, eavesdropping on their conversations first without his knowledge, then with it; later, Clementina, thinking herself refused by Sir Charles, desires to “go her ways to a nunnery.” Very interesting stuff; I haven’t read Twelfth Night yet (sad to say), but I believe one of the characters is called Olivia, as is a spiteful Italian lady in Sir Charles.

I recently finished reading The Club Dumas, my second foray into the intellectual mysteries of Arturo Perez-Reverte. While The Flanders Panel, another book of his, delved into the world of art restoration, The Club Dumas introduces us to that of rare book collecting, through the character of Lucas Corso, a book detective or mercenary of sorts. The book has two separate plots, centering around Corso’s commissions to determine the authenticity of a hand-written chapter from Dumas’s Three Musketeers, and of an occult book—supposedly co-authored by the devil—called The Nine Doors of the Kingdom of Shadows. The biggest mystery of the book was how Perez-Reverte could make these two disparate threads come together at the end.

I enjoyed the book quite a lot. Right off the bat, I found myself comparing it to another literary murder mystery, The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl. Both books center around strange (and deadly) happenings that seem to coincide with a famous work of literature. But while The Dante Club was thrown off, in my opinion, by Pearl’s attempts to write with the elaborate grammar and cadence of the nineteenth-century intellectual Oliver Wendall Holmes, The Club Dumas manages to feel simultaneously more intellectual and less pretentious. And despite the mercenary attitudes of many of the book-collecting characters, I enjoyed the detailed descriptions of rare books, especially since I am currently learning the art of bookbinding and repair.

I won’t go into details about The Club Dumas’s plot, since it is a mystery; instead, I’ll mention some of my notes about the book. It was a sound literary mystery, with a hint of the supernatural; it makes a lot of very specific references to Dumas’s life and the contents of his books, so it would have been helpful to reread The Three Musketeers and perhaps its sequels as well. I can’t help but like mysteries that are involved enough to require charts and illustrations, and The Club Dumas contains both: it has not only reproductions of the important woodcuts from The Nine Doors, but also illustrations from The Three Musketeers that have parallels in Corso’s investigations.

In the end, I was impressed by the unusual way that Perez-Reverte wrapped up the two threads of the story. The Dante Club had a more traditional ending for a mystery of this type; The Club Dumas had more of a whiplash ending. I was left a bit unsatisfied by some minor elements, like Corso’s repeated insistence on getting paid, which seemed like more of a device to keep him in the room so things would be (kind of) explained to him. It was, however, much more satisfying than the ending of Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons, another book with a supernatural/art historical thread, which left me feeling completely cheated at the end. But as one of the book’s characters says, “In matters of literature, the intelligent reader may even enjoy the strategy used to turn him into the victim.” This is certainly the case for The Club Dumas.

Today I finished typing the second volume of Sir Charles Grandison. It hasn’t been published to Project Gutenberg yet, but should be soon… I’ll keep you notified. In the meantime, a short review of Vol. 2:

This volume continues the saga of Sir Charles Grandison’s life, as narrated almost exclusively by the eternally grateful and admiring Harriet Byron. A large portion of the beginning is something of a treatise on the evils of duelling, its historical origin, and instances of brave men who did not consider duelling an option. Next follows a very long history of the Grandison family, which turns out to be mostly the history of Sir Charles’s parents and his sisters, with very little of his own life except tangentially (his sisters tell the history to Harriet, and were not aware of his doings abroad on the Continent, having been forbidden by their father to correspond with him). This took up at least a third of the book, perhaps more. The remainder of the volume encompasses Charlotte Grandison’s dating difficulties, and Harriet’s woes about being unutterably below Sir Charles in every single aspect of existence, with a few more instances of his perfection thrown in. There have been very vague hints about some sort of intrigue in Italy while he was abroad, but everyone has been too discreet to come out and ask Sir Charles what’s up.

Sir Charles Grandison, so far, has been largely all from the perspective of Harriet Byron, with very few letters written by anyone else. I miss the banter back and forth between penpals, as in Clarissa; the conversations have been very one-sided, despite Harriet’s imagined responses from her relatives, and comments about having received letters from them (which the reader never gets to see). Plus, I am getting tired of Harriet for being so darn good, and yet so seemingly unworthy of Sir Charles’s love. Charlotte would probably write more interesting letters, but she is constantly with Harriet, so has no occasion to write her.

I’ve started in on the contents and first letter of Volume 3, and it looks like the same tone will predominate, with mostly letters from Harriet, and a few one-sided letters from Sir Charles to Dr. Bartlett. There will also be packets of letters sent from Harriet to her family, containing letters from Dr. Bartlett to Harriet, and letters from Sir Charles to him at previous dates; all this seems a bit convoluted, but perhaps it will flow nicely when it actually comes up.

Up Next…

As I mentioned, I have already begun work on the next volume of Sir Charles Grandison, and continue to work on The White Peacock, slowly, mostly from home.