Review: The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

Readers are familiar with the pattern.  You go to a bookstore or a library, looking for something new to read.  Your eyes are caught by the cover of a book that is familiar to you, though its contents are not.  You've considered picking this book up before, but always passed it over, for one reason or another.  Not this time.  You take it home, and you read it.  Sometimes, this book is terrible, and you feel let down, your expectations completely unmet.  Other times, it's passable, sort of mediocre.  Or it's just okay.

And sometimes you read it, and it's absolutely phenomenal.

I first noticed The Pillars of the Earth when I was a kid.  I don't even remember how old I was.  It was a huge book, daunting even in its paperback binding, and completely unremarkable -- except for the simple fact that both of my parents had read it.  My parents had literary tastes absolutely opposite each other -- my mother had a bookcase full of trade paperbacks with heaving bodices and long-haired ruffians on the dust jackets; my father collected the works of Graham Greene and James Clavell, and attempted to read only what he considered 'brain food'.  That they could find a book that catered to both of their tastes was surprising and unexpected -- which is why the novel stuck in my head, although at the time I had little interest in it.  It slipped out of my mind for close to twenty years, until the miniseries was released.  Of course my parents watched it, my father raved over it, and it was around that time that he gave me his old, dog-eared copy, the one I had seen so many years ago, and suggested I give it a try.

The book is huge -- 983 pages.  It did not matter.  I did not care.  Twenty or so pages in, I was hooked.  And today -- stuck at home in the middle of an ice storm -- I finished it, five days after starting it.

This book is fantastic.

I don't even know if I can write an adequate review.  To summarize this novel into a couple of words is almost impossible -- there is too much, there are too many characters.  The synopsis from Goodreads is surprisingly brief:

In 12th-century England, the building of a mighty Gothic cathedral signals the dawn of a new age. This majestic creation will bond clergy and kings, knights and peasants together in a story of toil, faith, ambition and rivalry. A sweeping tale of the turbulent middle ages, The Pillars of the Earth is a masterpiece from one of the world's most popular authors. 

This is the second Ken Follett book I've ever read (I tackled Eye of the Needle when I was twenty-one, in an attempt to stave off the sad feelings I had after graduating college and leaving Rhode Island), but it is head and shoulders above anything I've previously enjoyed reading.  Would I read it again?  Absolutely.  And I'd recommend it to anyone, as well.  It's long, but its longevity hardly matters.  This book is a winner, and a tale that will live on forever.


Rating: ***** (and if I could, I'd give it more)