Bookraft

Hmmm, a historical novel by Ken Follet, master of modern suspense novels and sketcher of amazing character portraits. The setting is surprising for Follett, 12th century England and the pre-Renaissance building of massive and imposing cathedrals throughout Europe - one of the catalysts along with the Crusades for Europe's embarking on rediscovering and reinvigorating itself by means of its origins. And such a cast of characters! Each is launched into the story with unforgettable drama - the "witch" Ellen cursing publicly with damning epithets a prior, a prelate, a sheriff - all together at the hanging of her lover; the Welsh monk Prior Phillip surviving in his youth by dint of a harrowing voice of another from sure slaughter at the hands of an English raiding party consumed with blood lust and propelled by wanton looting; Tom the Builder demanding from William Hamleigh, son of the Earl, a final payment to his workers for a discontinued country house.

On and on, the first two hundred pages of a thousand page book introduce one memorable character sketch after another in the England of post-William the Conqueror. Life and government is subject to the whims and fancies of rival Lords and Barons. The English monarchy constantly teeters from one faction to another as Civil Wars are endemic - and the Church is one of the few [and unsteady] refuges for the population. One sees first hand, the dangers of a plutocracy.

With this compelling setting and cast of characters including portraits of historical figures such as King Stephen, sometime Queen Maud, Archbishop Henry, and a host of ravenously aspiring Earls, Counts and Barons - the making of the cathedral at KingsBridge [think of the actual cathedral at Salisbury as one of Follett's models]becomes the backdrop of the story and interaction among the characters.

And unfortunately, just like the first and second tries at building the Kingsbridge Cathedral, this wonderful beginning and amazing cast of characters and fascinating times falls down. And unlike the third time charm for building Kingsbridge cathedral, the plot line and the characters did not just fall but collapsed out of all believability too many times to enumerate. The three fundamental cracks were 1)evil is consummate - the Hamleigh Family, Bishop Wallerin, Alfred the prodigal son, Remedius the arch-prior, and many others [each was called upon to act malignantly almost by consummate evil whim]; 2)the good characters never seemed to relate or interact or communicate as might be expected with each other. The essence of smart people is their ability to empathize, understand and communicate with others recognizing where the other is coming from but having the knack to test, reveal, and extend their understanding with frank conversation/communication. Follett takes an extreme approach - only the evil are consistently communication smart. Most of the good characters fail to act rationally because they time and again fail to consistently test for others intentions by talk and actions with either friend or possible foe; 3)good characters fail to learn - a bad character has been a risk in the past, why expose yourself to their evident ill will and malignancy regardless of whether you can explain it or not. Some of the acts of ill will that propel the story have a realistic and believable elements of surprise or are the consequences of beyond control events or natural disasters. But after roughly page 300, the frequency of non-surprising ill behavior rises to a risk crescendo that even our contemporary greedy, TooBigToFail bankers and their myopic government regulators would have connected the dots to disaster.

In sum, for the next 300-350 pages in the book I found myself yelling at Jack, Prior Phillip, Aliena et alia - "don't do that, can't you see Evil villain-X will want to not just cause trouble but given the Medieval Times, wreak maximum havoc and get away Scott Free". So by around page 657 or so the story line and interest in these non-learning characters collapses - and I am not willing to wait to find out how Justice is finally meted out to Evil Doers - after all I can get that in an just under an hour in any of TV's dozen or so "Law and Order" dramas.