5 posts tagged “fiction”
I was really excited about this quasi-sequel to The Pillars of the Earth, which I loved. (Just to clarify, I loved it a long time before Oprah did, okay?) Since this book is set 200 later, none of the same characters appear, although there are some family connections.
I enjoyed this book, but I didn't love it the way I loved Pillars of the Earth. World Without End follows a handful of citizens from Kingsbridge through about 35 years, encompassing economic upheaval, war with France, and two plague outbreaks. There's also a lot of church politics involved.
Although one of the primary characters is an architect and there are some major buiding projects scattered throughout the narrative, I think it lacks the cohesiveness that Pillars of the Earth had, with the construction of the cathedral going on throughout the whole book. That was the story of a town and some people set against this grand, epic backdrop of the cathedral construction. This one is the story of some people set against many other more minor events. (I should qualify that by saying that although I know that I loved The Pillars of the Earth and remember basically what it was about and some selected incidents from the book, I read it over 10 years ago and don't remember specifics. I think I'm due for a reread.)
Follett clearly researches all of his books very thoroughly, and this one is no exception. However, I did find some of the modern language kind of jarring. I know it would be ridiculous to write all the dialog in a 1000+ page book in the authentic dialect of the fourteenth century (nobody would understand anything), but I think he could have found better words to use that didn't sound so modern for terms like "girlfriend" and "boyfriend," etc.
Although the book was good, it wasn't as good as I was expecting it to be. When I got to the part where the cousins "reenact a childhood trauma" I thought it was finally going to get exciting, but that part was over within a few pages.
It turned out that the prison story was the more important part of the book. There are some big secrets that come out, but they're not as exciting as I was expecting or hoping. If you're looking for some modern gothic fiction, I'd try The Thirteenth Tale before this one.
The Kite Runner focused on the relationship between two boys. A Thousand Splendid Suns portrays the individual and joint experiences of Mariam and Laila, two women who eventually become the wives of an abusive Kabul shoemaker.
Like The Kite Runner, the book tells the bigger story of the turmoil of modern Afghanistan through the stories of the individual characters. That could easily come off as artificial or forced, but it works because Mariam and Laila's stories come first. The real events that are in the book (the ousting of the Soviets, 9/11, the end of Taliban rule) affect them just as they would have affected millions of real Afghan women. For a non-fiction non-lover like me, books like this are great.
It's set in Seattle and is very detailed--I could picture all the locations described.
Also, it made me kind of want to break something.
It's a family saga set on Cape Breton Island. There are countless (rature juicy) family secrets that are hinted at in various points in the beginning of the book, and revealed throughout the middle and end of the book. MacDonald does a good job doling out information to keep the reader interested, but maybe a little more hinting would have made it more of a page-turner.
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