Unputdownable

I was starting to feel I was the only person on the planet who still hadn't read the The Pillars of the Earth. Fortunately, my dear friend Halagan saw to it and gave me the book for my birthday, assuring me I would love it. And boy was he right.

This novel by Ken Follett has everything that makes a story great. The characters are terribly compelling, and their everchanging fortunes made me both giddy with relief and mad with anger. The good guys are very good, and the bad guys are horrible human beings. The two most notorious villains, Waleran Bigod and William Hamleigh, are so despicable, so vile, so absolutely evil that I was near apoplectic every time they got away with murder. But the extremely likeable good guys, Phillip, Tom, Jack, Ellen, and Aliena, are too good to lower themselves to their level and fight them on their own terms. I understand that, but they have to put up with so much that I found myself about to scream at them to go hire and assassin to get rid of those abominable creatures. (And I should include the invidious Alfred in this group too.) I was so angry Waleran and William wouldn't leave them alone it was hard to remember these characters were not real people. That, of course, didn't stop me from cheering when things went their way, or when they managed to foil Waleran's or William's schemes. My copy of the book is 975 pages long, and I read them all with bated breath. And had there been a thousand pages more, I would have devoured them with equal enthusiasm. These were not characters: these were people struggling to make a living, chasing their dreams and fighting for them. To say that I found them and their misadventures compelling would be a gross understatement.

So what's in this book? Well, there's love and hate, romance and violence, dreams and nightmares, good and evil, laughter and tears, blood and sweat, lust and melancholy, truth and lies, honor and treachery. The question should be what is not in this formidable novel. I think by now you will have gathered I consider this book a masterpiece, and it's a shame it took me twenty years to get to read it. If you haven't read it yet (and now that I have, there must be few people left), stop reading whatever you're currently enjoying and buy a copy of The Pillars of the Earth: it will blow your mind.