“Pillars of the Earth”
by Ken Follett
Published: October 2007
ISBN: 0451225244

(Updated: January 1, 2008.)

From the Publisher…

The spellbinding epic set in twelfth-century England, The Pillars of the Earth tells the story of the lives entwined in the building of the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has ever known — and a struggle between good and evil that will turn church against state, and brother against brother.

I became aware of this book through the Oprah Winfrey’s enthusiastic description of why this book was her current “Book Club” choice. I was not disappointed.

I loved the descriptions of place. The towns, the castles, the roads, the forests were visible. I loved the description of the passion of crafts in general and the art and science of architecture in particular. And even if I have no idea how right it really is, all of this felt right. And I loved that both the men and the women were strongly, humanly, compassionately, smartly written.

As for the story, I’d say that I was quite spellbound for probably 600 of the 973 pages. Maybe even 700. I wanted to know what would happen next. I cared greatly about what would happen next. And I responded with a range of emotions to what I did end up reading. After this many pages though I found that I began to be able to predict outcomes. I still wanted everything to turn out well but losing the element of surprise made me simply read in order to “have read”. And that’s a whole bunch of pages to read simply to “have read”.

All in all, this is a wonderful work. If the last quarter of the book had been edited down, I’m pretty sure that it would have rated a 5 on my scale. As it stands, I give it a 4 out of 5 hearts.