2007 Reading Challenge: Book 40
An Instance of the Fingerpost – Iain Pears
This is one of the most unusual books I have read for years, possibly ever. It may seem only too easy, even trite, to make this claim. But in this case it is absolutely sincere, and the book comes very highly recommended. Iain Pears’ remarkable historical novel set in England during the 1660s tells the story of a murder from four different perspectives – each of the narrators was deeply entangled in the events that led to the death. Gradually we are led deeper and deeper into the story – but whose version of events should we believe? And is there ever such a thing as a reliable narrator?
As well as a whodunnit and a disquisition on the nature of objective truth, it’s also an epic and stunningly-imagined account of life in Restoration England, with the country recovering from years of civil war followed by military dictatorship, and religious orthodoxy rigorously enforced as the only path to continued peace. Deviations in the direction of either nonconformism or Catholicism are stamped on extremely hard and we are shown what this means from the perspectives of characters right across the religious and social spectrum.
As a final flourish the author starts off with what seems like a paltry, provincial little tale of a traveller barely coping abroad – and winds up broadening and broadening his horizons until he is operating on a truly international stage. I picked this up in a bookshop because I knew that if I walked away from it there was a very good chance I would never be able to find it again or indeed even remember its title. I hesitated over reading it – it’s a mighty long book and I feared it would be as dry as dust. Fear not.
This story, written in 1998 and looking to be Pears’ breakthrough novel even though it was a very long way from being the first thing he’d written, is an absorbing page-turner. It has the kind of coherent internal world that you can occupy to the exclusion of most of the rest of your life while you are engaged in reading it. The author does a great job of distinguishing between the different character voices and sends his plot sailing across oceans rather than confining it to the local riverbank – while doing just enough to anchor it in credibility.
If you read nothing else this year, read this.
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