An Instance of the Fingerpost

Rating:
Summary: Needed editing
Review: The writing is good. The historical background is excellent, both in the details and the broad issues. The characters are fairly well developed. The structure of the novel is interesting and adds dimension.

Now, the bad news. There is no tension. None. The other qualities are good enough that the book may have worked had it been a third its size. But when you're reading the same series of events for the fourth time in a row (in great detail), merely changing the point of view does not generate enough tension to painlessly keep up the level interest necessary to fully follow the various subplots.

Another minor problem is one of which many writers of historical fiction are guilty. The good guys are those who are most sympathetic to modern sensabilities, and the bad guys uniformly embrace the prejudices of the day. Pears writes in the first person, and in describing the prevailing attitudes of the day he is not convincingly sympathetic.

One final problem. A significant portion of the denouement is pretty predictable to anyone who has watched too much TV.

In the book's defense I think comparisons to the Name of the Rose are unfair. Eco writes Literature; Pears writes mysteries. And regardless of my other criticism, it is a mystery certainly more intelligent than most.

Rating:
Summary: Long and a bit tiresome but ultimately rewarding
Review: I started this book with enthusiasm, I was looking not only for a good portrayal of England in the 1600's (which it is) but of a clever murder mystery (which it sort of is).
Pears is very good in creating characters and narrating their point-of-view from a purely subjective style. The four parts of the book take upon a same incident, the murder of a priest and professor in the Oxford University and the execution of the perpetrator. Every narrator holds firmly on his truth and as that it should work, but something ratter odd happens. When we read Marco Da Cola's version of the story the perception of his subjectivity is very clear after a dozen pages, he is a fun and mannered character and keeps our interest for 100 pages. Then we are to read Jack Presscot's words, and things start to go wrong, because his character is so obviously in a particular far-fetched reality that after forty pages or so I became very tired of his discourse and begged for it to end, as his storyline slowly approaches the murder we even feel a little of his despair, he's so obsesed in his father's innocence that he repeats himself all the time thus reducing the surprises for the reader. The third part has the same problem, starts very interestingly but as soon we understand the particular distortion in Wallis point-of-view we start to distrust his perception and the reading becomes tedious.
It's of course the intention of Pearl to show us that Anthony Wood is the more objective of the narrators and therefore this part (and almost every review here coincides here) is the most readable and enjoyable of the book. The ending is very good and the historical background impressive.
The thing is, for this sort of structure to work we have to find (as we do in the amazing Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell) that every new narrator rewrites and illuminates what the previous said. This effect is diminished beacuse the oddity and subjectivity of the characters reduce their believability in the first place. By the second part we know this view is going to be challenged and therofore we distrust it, and reading becomes slow and tiresome.
This is a novel more apt for the Historic Novel reader that for the Mystery reader, but if you enjoy both genres go ahead.

Rating:
Summary: Alexandria revisited
Review: An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears relates four views of the same events taking place immediately after the restoration of Charles II in England. Similar but superior to the Alexandrian Quartet; we believe what we want to believe and if we are politically connected our beliefs can be highly dangerous to others. Superior in that we gain insight into the customs and practices of the time along with an uneasy feeling that what Pears writes of science and politics is as true today as it was then.

Rating:
Summary: Inriguing but overlong
Review: The great weakness of this book is its prolixity: it is simply much too long. An engaging, well written historical murder mystery, with a background of rival ambitions and political and religious faction and intrigue, set in Oxford in the Restoration England of 1663, it is ingenious, witty, deftly plotted, filled with a rogues' gallery of colorful although not necessarily very believable characters (the heroine is particularly hard to swallow), has a surprise ending, and is of considerable historical interest. Many of the characters are real historical personages (e.g., Robert Boyle, John Locke, Christopher Wren). One feels the author has done his homework and knows his period, but he is too much enamored of his erudition and glib facility, to the detriment of his tale. The story is told, Rashomon-like, by four narrators: a visiting Italian physician (who may be much more) drawn into the circle of several Oxford men of science and learning; an Oxford student and young madman with his own axe to grind at any cost; a malicious, unscrupulous, egotistical Oxford mathematician and divine with secret ties to high government officials; and an eccentric, ineffectual Oxford antiquarian scholar who is smitten with the heroine and scorned by his peers. Each is quite different from the others, and the truth gradually begins to emerge as their radically divergent versions of the events unfold.

The trouble is that the book is 700 pages long, when it ought to be, say, 400 pages long. There are precious few murder mysteries, even learned historical ones, that merit a 700-page treatment; this isn't one of them. It is much too ponderous and slow-moving; it is larded with too many lengthy passages of philosophizing, moralizing, adducing quotations from "authorities," reflecting and meditating and agonizing over this and that, that impede the forward motion of the narrative; all too frequently one wants to prod the author to get on with it. The events here, the story to be told, simply don't justify a book of this length. An aggressive editor not afraid to brandish his red pen fearlessly could have made this a much better read.

Rating:
Summary: Frankly, this book is brilliant in every way
Review: I cannot recommend a book more highly than Iain Pears debut novel. It is simply brilliant. Telling the story of a 17th century murder, from the perspective of four witnesses, the book is so well written, and researched, that you can't help feeling as if you are living and breathing this turbulent period of English History. To say too much about the plot would spoil the story and the wonderful, end when the truth is revealed in a remarkable denouement. This is a book that I couldn't wait to get to the end of, yet felt bereft when I closed the pages for the last time on a series of characters who seemed so real.

An Instance of the Fingerpost is more than a whodunnit (much, MUCH more in fact) and more than a historical novel, though the characters are woven into the fabric of history). Yet for all the scholarly research, the book is as easy to read as Dr. Suess. It's quite remarkable to find a book so beautifully written, with such knowledge and passion for the period.

I cannot wait for Iain Pears' next novel.

PLEASE buy this book, it is superb.

Rating:
Summary: ZZZZZZ..................
Review: This book was extremely boring. I'm a big fan of Umberto Eco, and (to a much lesser degree) Perez-Reverte, so I thought this book was a sure thing. But WOW was I wrong! I struggled through the first two character's tales, and then just couldn't justify wasting ONE MORE MINUTE on this borrrring tale. The characters are boring and horribly unsimpathetic, as is the story, as is the historical period (Cromwell does not exactly equal exicitement). The research done for the book is surly commendable but the fact is that the time period is so lame that it really doesn't lend to decent storytelling. AVIOD THIS! IT STINKS!

Rating:
Summary: Mind-numbingly boring, just couldn't get into this...
Review: I bought this book to read during the four-hour train ride to New York. What a waste. An Instance of the Fingerpost is a historical novel with a touch of intrigue. I love historical novels, cannot resist them, but this one left a bad taste in my mouth. For one thing, the author drones on and on with descriptions that serve no purpose to the story. It felt as though Pears wanted to share his thoughts -- however remote -- to the reader even if it had no relevance whatsoever.

Yawning and wishing you had something else to keep yourself amused are never good signs. So I gave up on this book before finishing it. I felt cheated the way I do when I watch a very good film trailer: good premise, big hype, bad outcome. I cannot fathom the good reviews here. Disappointing...

Rating:
Summary: Great!
Review: Intrigueing portrait of Oxford circa 1650. Great story, detailed, well woven, believable. Aside from Grapes of Wrath this is the best book I have ever read. Plenty of twists and turns.

Rating:
Summary: Boooooooorrrring
Review: Reduce this book by 50% and it would still be way too verbose. The first narative was able to maintain my interest from time to time, but the second two just overwhelmed me with needless boring nonsense. I was waiting for the blundy girl to be narrator, that may have spiced things up a bit. What an enormous waste of time. Fingerpost, I gladly give you the finger.

Rating:
Summary: Thematic spoiler ahead (slightly a plot spoiler)
Review: While asserting the value of religion in the face of science in "The Big Picture: what the religions of the world teach us about the nature of ultimate reality", Huston Smith, well-known scholar of comparative religion, decries the way the term "mystery" has been pressed into the service of the literary genre of "whodunnits". I suspect Smith has not come across Pears' "Instance".

Unlike other reviewers, I thought the insertion of divine mystery back into secular mystery made this book a powerful read. (Although I admit the secular mystery had me hooked and kept me reading to see whether the falsely accused would be vindicated - a "who-really-dunnit".)

I can see how those who continue past the first section primarily to discover "who dunnit" might find little reward after much tedium, and find the last hundred pages a bewildering "aberration". If however, you sit back and watch an investigation into the nature of "truth", you can immerse yourself in a turbulent time when competing worldviews arose in response to the dissolution of an old social order.

Read "Instance" as a murder mystery if you like, or read its first narrative as roughly symbolic of empiricism, the second as symbolic of superstition, the third of reason and the fourth of mysticism and observe how each constructs its worldview.

This foray into history also offers hope for the future. The union of spirituality and humanism could be just the ticket for today's disillusionment with socialism and capitalism. Pears' willingness to fingerpost the idea that the most clear-sighted are those who allow love to triumph over prejudice (in other words, Love points to Truth) satisfied this reader's desire for revealed mystery.