2 jan

Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett describes the period we have been travelling through, the 12th century, but then in Southern England. The fictional town of Kingsbridge is the place where people are murdered, betrayed, fall in and out of love, live holy or completely sinful and where a cathedral is being built. Written well enough, although most of the characters are just good or bad and never the twain shall meet.
Just like the cathedral that is being built, the novel itself is a piece of architecture. One starts with enough characters to keep a story of 1000 pages (in e ebook version) going and make sure that they meet each other over and over again. The good ones struggle and the bad ones thrive until at the end the good ones win after all.
I do not know the real difference between literature with a small l and a large L, but it probably has to do with the fact that literature with a large L doesn’t end well. Stoner for example. Although there also must be a difference between the length of sentences and the use of adjectives.
It is a fun read though and although the town Kingsbridge is fictional, lots of the events are fact, including the rise of King Henry II, the first of English Plantagenets kings, whose wife Eleanor owned half of France.
It kept me captivated for a good day and a half, during which the unpredictable weather outside our camper could not tempt me to step outside and explore the border of the Loire any further than had been done on tuesday.
One of the things Follett describes very well is the fact that most horrors are man-made, although nature is being blamed for it. England at the beginning of the twelfth century was having lots of clashes between different factions that claimed the throne. A severe storm or a late frost under these kind of circumstances could easily break man’s resistance. Bad harvests were often more the result of plundering soldiers and the ease with which houses were being burned down (and rebuilt) It makes clear that man definitely has become more resistant to horror over the ages.
There are lots of awkward things in this book though, mainly the coincidence that the group of about 20 characters keep meeting each other, very often in the most awkward situations, like when the wife of good person A dies in the forest after giving birth to good person B, who is left behind in the forest to be saved by good person C, after being seen by good person D, who starts to have a relationship with good person A the same evening. After a while they all start to live in Kingsbridge.
But then, it must be fun to build a scheme like this around Bernard of Clairvaux. Maybe that’s what I’ll try to do from next week on in Chassenat.