Pillars of the Earth

The Pillars of the Earth
Ken Follett

At 1007 pages, this book is a doorstop, and a page turner. It took over my life for several weeks, and what pulled me in was narrative. Like his character, Jack the jongleur, Ken Follett is an excellent storyteller. The events fold neatly into each other, each one sequencing logically from the previous.
We know, for instance, that Aliena, daughter of the Earl of Shiring, is the character best suited to manage her father’s estate. Although she is a woman, this seems to be her destiny. Seamlessly, Follett creates in Richard, her brother and rightful heir, a character who excels in the skills of war but is a poor manager, and has him intervene to save his sister from an assault by her estranged husband, an intervention he is driven to make because of his memories of his inability to save her at the beginning of the novel when he was a young and spineless boy. Thus an event at the beginning of the novel is woven into the concluding narrative. But how to remove Richard from his role as earl? Follett brings back his character, William, whom we can always count on for nefarious deeds. William, who at this point is a sheriff, tries to arrest Richard for murdering Alfred, the husband, as this is the middle ages and men can legally rape their wives. Richard is weak and ineffective, but he can’t meet an untimely end because he is the loyal brother of the heroine. To the rescue comes Prior Philip, the idea man. Richard is absolved of his crime by leading a crusade to the Holy Land where he can spend the rest of his life being a hero at fighting, which he loves, and Aliena will manage the estate in his absence. A dozen years later Richard dies in the Holy Land and his nephew, Aliena’s son, tutored in estate management by his mother, inherits the title of Earl. In the meantime, Philip, an ally of Aliena’s, has been able to finish construction of his cathedral with stones from the quarry on her estate. Every event is logical and evolves naturally from preceding ones with a craft that is never overstrained.
Setting is another strength of this book. Anyone who has visited a Gothic cathedral has wondered about the genius of the architects, the development of the concept, the methods of construction and the lives of the workers. Follett has done his homework and brought the 11th century to life, with the shifting loyalties at court, the power struggle between church and state, the fragmentation of power within those entities, the relationship between England and the Continent, and the challenges of living in a country where there is civil unrest. Follett makes a strong commentary on the debilitating effects of civil war and the concomitant lack of law and order in absence of strong leadership, which extends beyond his particular setting of the war between Stephen and Maud.
Character development, however, is not Follett’s strength. He creates the characters he needs to drive his plot, gives then the strengths and weaknesses that will motivate their actions, dresses then up like paper dolls, and has words come out of their mouths like bubbles in a comic strip. He doesn’t love his characters, he needs them to tell his story. For such a long book, there are really not very many characters, and personally I got tired of the ever virtuous and sometimes introspective Prior Philip, always the problem solver in any crisis, and I wished that we could have some other villains besides Waleran Bigod and William of various estates of life. Whenever Follett needs a resolution, he turns to Philip, and when he needs some plot complication, he turns to these two “bad guys” whose motives were established at the beginning of the book and remain static throughout.
Character development is an impediment in a tale with so many complications, but I would have liked to have heard more about Jack’s reunion with his grandmother in France; seeking out his family was one of the reasons he went to the continent. Likewise, I would have liked to know what effect the revelation about Jonathan’s parentage had on him and his little sister, Martha. Follett cannot find a niche for poor little Martha, and I feel sorry that she has been neglected by him.
Nevertheless, this novel has been a bestseller since it was published in 1989 and cannot be dismissed despite its faults. It is a classic in the ‘good yarn’ genre of literature, and what’s wrong with a good tale?
Despite the predictability of some of its plot turns and the woodenness of its characters, its strength is in the story and the delighted, “Of course!” that we feel as its scenes unfold.