Magda Reviews Pillars and Shadow

8/2/2019 Magda Reviews Pillars and Shadow

1/5

Magda Reviews

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

copyright Andrew Greenfield Lockhart 2012

Magda Green Books

www.magdagreen.co.uk


2/5

REVIEW: The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

The Pillars of the Earth is a story about the building of a cathedral.

Put like that, except perhaps to an architect, it sounds rather bland and boring.

The novel is neither. It is a tale told with the epic sweep of Alexandre Dumas,

combined with all the page-turning skill of a master thriller writer.

Tom Builder is out of work. He has fallen foul of the local squires son, William

Hamleigh, and is forced to go on the road. His wife has just died in childbirth and he

abandons the infant in the forest near a monastery. Shortly after, he and his

surviving children, Alfred and Martha, encounter the mysterious Ellen and her son,

Jack. Ellen is something of a recluse. She lives in the forest and is regarded as a

witch by some of the locals.

Prior Phillip of Kingsbridge is tolerant and capable. He is ambitious too and

wants to turn his priory into a cathedral. When his brother brings him an abandoned

infant boy, he decides to bring him up as a monk in the Church. He embarks on a

plan to gain the support of the earl and his bishop for his building project. He

eventually engages Tom to oversee building work.

Aliena, daughter of the Earl of Shiring, has an independent mind. She is being

pressed against her will into marriage with William and she rebels. William takes

revenge on her family and Aliena is cast into poverty. But she is a resourceful girl

and goes into business as a wool merchant.

For the next fifty years, Follett follows the lives of Tom, Ellen, Phillip, Aliena and

their dependents as they strive for their goals midst the harsh realities of life in the

twelfth century. King Henry I is dead and his daughter Matilda is warring with her

cousin Stephen for possession of the throne. As KIngsbridge Cathedral takes shape,

we follow their struggle for supremacy, Stephens victory, Matildas exile and herattempts to return. We are introduced to her son, Henry II, his quarrel with Thomas

Becket and the latters murder.

Many years ago, a friend quipped to me that there were only three things

needed to make a good novel: sex, mystery and religion. His punch line was meant

as a joke but I have always remembered his unintentional advice. It is a successful

formula, and The Pillars of the Earth has all three.

Of course there is religion aplenty. The main story is populated by priests,bishops, friars, priors, abbots, some pious, others greedy and sinister. There are


3/5

even a few Muslims.

Sex there is in abundance, both consensual and otherwise. There are three

romantic relationships that matter. That of Tom and Ellen is at first carnal but moves

on to something more substantial; that of Jack and Aliena begins as youthful

friendship but matures into what in another sort of novel would be termed True Love.

The third pairing provides the element of mystery. Who was Jacks father and

why was he feared by conspirators against the life of Prince William, heir to the

throne of England? We do not get the answer until the very end of the book but in

the meantime we are treated to intriguing and ingenious subplots that take us farther

into the history of the period, as well as exploring the characters of the principal

protagonists.

Occasionally, it is necessary to suspend disbelief, as when, for example, we

travel with Aliena and her baby across France and Muslim Spain in search of her

lover. Also, there are some coincidences that seem so unlikely as to be fantasy. Yet

Follett manages to resolve even those with the writing skills he has honed in another

genre.

The Pillars of the Earth is not a book to be read at a single sitting. Yet, like the

best serial drama, one is drawn back to it night after night without loss of suspense

or continuity.


4/5

REVIEW: The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon is literary fiction in the truest sense.

It is a novel about books - about one book in particular - and about the power of

words to inspire, inflame and ultimately destroy.

10-year-old Daniel Sempere discovers The Shadow of the Wind in the

Cemetery of Forgotten Books and from that moment his life becomes entwined with

and begins to follow a similar path to that of the books author Julian Carax.

The drama is played out amid the horrors and uncertainties of Revolutionary

and Post-revolutionary Barcelona, where class is everything and yet where power

rests not only with rich families but with anyone sufficiently ambitious and

unscrupulous to take full advantage of the vacuums that war has left. Daniel, the

novels narrator, is none of these things. He is just a normal boy caught up in events

beyond his understanding and control, and which threaten to overwhelm him.

Amid the realities of time and place, however, Zafons sense of humour shines

through. He is able to see comedy in the grimmest settings and situations. Indeed,

there are passages where the line between grim drama, comedy and even farce is

finely drawn, as in many scenes featuring the novels most endearing character,

Fermin Romero de Torres, spy turned tramp turned bookshop guru. It is Fermin who

shines a light on lifes tragedy and shows us the real meaning of loyalty and

friendship.

The Shadow of the Wind has its malevolent villain too, one who evokes

shades of Hugos Javert, though without Javerts morality or redeemability. Fumero

is corruption and decadence personified, almost to the point of melodrama.

The novel is literary, for sure, but it is also an historical romance with gothic

overtones. Julian Carax haunts its pages with an almost but not quite supernaturalpresence. Yet amid all the horrors and amorality of this war-torn society resides love

that defies class and convention.

Daniel, vaguely reminiscent of John Ridd in Lorna Doone , is a self-deprecating

hero. He confesses to being a coward yet he seems not enough of a fool to risk his

life when the odds are so stacked against him. When it really matters - to the story -

he comes through to his own cost.

Translations are tricky. The translator must not only translate the words butmust also capture the mood, the emotion, the sense of time and place and the


5/5

nuances of language of the original, and present them convincingly as the authors

own. He or she must remove that alien feel and render the work as acceptable to

the reader as a work in his or her own language.

In this translation, Lucia Graves manages to do just that. By the end, I felt I

knew the Barcelona of the nineteen-thirties, -forties and -fifties; in her prose, I could

feel the texture of the snow; I could be disgusted by the fetidness of the abandoned

garrets or be awed at the ostentatious luxury of the upper-class villas; I could hear

the clanking of trams as they made their way along the Avenido del Tibidabo or the

peal of church bells across the city.

The Shadow of the Wind has all the elements of an enduring classic. It is a

story that sometimes shocks but often makes you laugh. And just once or twice, it

makes you shed a tear or two.

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Magda Reviews Pillars and Shadow