Well, as someone who completely rejects the idea of a 'God' and Religion, I certainly did not expect this book, which is ultimately about building a stone cathedral, would enthrall and capture me the way it did.

It has taken me weeks to finish this mammoth novel, only reading in the short minutes I have between school runs and work commutes... and it's been a workout hurling these pages around in my handbag for so long, but the fulfilment and pleasure along the way has been beautiful to feel.

You never know," Jack said speculatively. "There may come a time when savages like William Hamleigh aren't in power; when the laws protect the ordinary people instead of enslaving them; when the king makes peace instead of war. Think of that - a time when towns in England don't need walls!

By far, one of my top reads. Ever.


The duck swallows the worm, the fox kills the duck, the men shoot the fox, and the devil hunts the men.


There is a continuous theme of power struggle, a desire for peace and joy, constant threat of ruination, war, disruption, politics, court politics, religious politics and this bleeding into the masons and master builders and the ordinary Town folks. The journey is long, exhausting, perilous, tragic, disgusting, morally corrupt and yet there is beauty, poetic justice, love, passion, tenderness, emotional intelligence and really is a book that makes you stop and think.

There are unpleasant themes throughout this book, rape and murder, and some may consider the wording crass or uncomfortable, but I think it added to the overall feel that this book makes you feel. It's an unfortunate reality in a very cruel and dangerous time, whilst this is fictional, it is steeped in our familiar history and blended to create a very realistic and heart warming read, one that makes you look at your English Country Village very very differently and takes you back to its time of creation in such an intimate way. I live in a Hamlet, nestled deep into a stone village/church and old farming... it was not hard to use my imagination when reading.

And Jack, our little Village no longer have walls for protection.

I highly recommend this book, and Ken Follett has become a staple on my shelf, even though this is my only novel I have read of his, I know I will enjoy his other works of art. And these are meaty books...


She loved him because he had brought her back to life. She had been like a caterpillar in a cocoon, and he had drawn her out and shown her that she was a butterfly.

I DID IT
I FINISHED

i can't stress enough how not good this book was. (everett says he likes it that i pan books, so he will be pleased with this review.)

where does one start when explaining what makes a piece of shit unpleasant? is it the smell? is it the origins? is it its inherent turdness?

this book is inherently a turd.

mr follett's preface says that people have told him it is the best book they have ever read, and i have to seriously question what they're comparing it to. sweet valley high? maybe, but not necessarily.

okay, compliment sandwich time - something nice, something not nice, something nice.

something nice: it's filled with precise information about industries during the middle ages (1130s-1170s, approx.) informative!

something not nice: these bits of information were not interesting, not really. also, the characters are not even one dimensional. they are, say 1/3 dimensional. all the good guys are attractive, all the bad guys are ugly. everyone things in contemporary ways. the book drones on and on in a mind-numbing sequence of "something good happens! something terrible happens! something good happens, that is just in time! something bad happens that seems like a disaster! something happens to redeem the badness!" you just don't care after a while. also, the central premise of the story, this commitment by these men to built a cathedral, is HELLA flimsy. mr. follett is supposedly something of a church architecture buff, so maybe for him that seems plausible, but i wasn't enrolled. yeah, they're impressive and lovely. NEXT. not funny, not intelligent, not exciting, not suspenseful, not sexy.

something nice: the cover of the book is very lovely, and the book itself is nice and long. hundreds and hundreds of pages of not-very-good writing.

there you go. this book was a piece of crap and oprah should be ashamed of herself for putting it in her book club alongside books like 'white oleander' and 'east of eden.'

2, 73 steluțe.

Constructori de catedrale, cavaleri, cerșetori, tîlhari, sex neîngrădit, pelerinaje în Europa, la Compostela, la Saint-Denis, război, dueluri, trădări, personaje cu suflete noroioase, posedate de diavol: cam așa aș rezuma, prin cîteva „cuvinte-cheie”, Stâlpii pământului...

Ken Follett a mutat cîteva personaje din secolul XX în secolul al XII-lea și le-a pus pe toate să vorbească aceeași limbă: engleza. E simplu, dar greșit. Pe la 1130, nobilii (elita, adică) se înțelegeau în normandă, un dialect francez (langue d'oïl), iar poporul de rînd vorbea așa-zisa old english. Sigur, mulți erau deja bilingvi. Dar acastă realitate nu transpare cîtuși de puțin din romanul lui Follett. Indivizii nu au nici o problemă de înțelegere, pricep instantaneu tot ce rostesc ceilalți.

Nu e suficient să menționezi naufragiul Corabiei albe, the White ship (în care a pierit William Adelin, urmașul regelui Henric I), moartea la 1 decembrie 1135 a numitului rege și perioada de „anarhie” care a urmat (lupta dintre adepții reginei Maud / Mathilda și adepții regelui Stephen) pentru a avea un roman cu adevărat istoric. E necesară o acuratețe pe care prozatorul britanic nu o respectă. Voi aminti un singur amănunt. Lordul William Hamleigh, un smintit și un sangvinar, aflat în catedrala Kingsbridge (vechea catedrală, nu cea nouă, proiectată și construită de Jack), privește cu jind spre Aliena (femeia care l-a respins ca soț) și observă răpit „coama ei din păr negru, cîrlionțat”. În Evul Mediu, nici o femeie nu ieșea din casă cu părul descoperit, purta o glugă sau un acoperămînt, o bonetă. Faptul e cu atît mai puțin probabil cu cît Aliena se afla într-o biserică.

Infinit mai multă atenție la amănunte găsim, de pildă, în Ivanhoe, romanul lui Walter Scott, a cărui acțiune se petrece cu 50 de ani mai tîrziu. Să acceptăm că toate astea sînt „licențe poetice” și că pe autor l-a interesat în primul rînd acțiunea. Și, har Domnului, acțiune găsim din belșug, chiar mai multă decît era nevoie. Violuri, sex sălbatic în pădure (și în timpul iernii), intrigi, conspirații, iubiri neîmpărtășite, brutalitate, trădări, sfîrtecări nemiloase, intestine revărsate pe podea etc.

Din păcate, pe Ken Follett credibilitatea acțiunilor nu-l prea interesează. Și nici psihologia personajelor. E după Crăciun. Agnes, soția lui Tom Constructorul, tocmai a murit la naștere, a născut un băiat. Bărbatul ei a săpat o groapă cu „o lopată de lemn uzată” (în pămîntul înghețat), a pus-o în mormînt. Bănuim că are sufletul distrus, inima zdrobită și că nu mai gîndește limpede, dar oboseala și emoțiile îl răpun. Ațipește. Exact în acest moment, o pădureancă, îmbrăcată doar într-o pelerină, îl supune unui viol sistematic. Tom Constructorul gîndește că e vorba de un înger (depravat) și, cum îngerii nu pot fi refuzați, „cedează”. Pădureanca nu poartă nimic pe dedesubt, își ridică pur și simplu pelerina, încît Tom îi poate pipăi „sînii moi și dornici cu sfîrcurile deja întărite”. Firește, puterea de combustie a lui Ellen, mama lui Jack, înfrînge frigul iernii și durerea lui Tom.

Indivizii din Stîlpii pămîntului sînt fie excesiv de buni (ca abatele Philip din Gwynedd, de exemplu, care e și excesiv de naiv), fie excesiv de răi (precum William Hamleigh sau diabolicul Waleran Bigod). Într-un cuvînt, nici un personaj nu e normal.

Dar cei care doresc acțiune trepidantă, răsturnări de situație și pedepsirea exemplară a celor răi nu se vor împiedica de aceste nevinovate observații...

Read this 1987 beloved beast by Ken Follett if you:

- Light up at books described as tomes, sagas, or epics. This is a long-ass story! The audiobook is 41 hours. FORTY ONE HOURS!!!

- Have an interest in 12th century architecture. But I mean really, who doesn’t?

- Want a reminder of what true villains look like. There are some super-evil mustache-twirling baddies here, like grade-a a-holes.

- Do anything Ms. Winfrey tells you to do. Shout out to Oprah’s Book Club 2007, y’all!

Don’t read it if you:

- Try to avoid reading about women being ravaged, both with their consent and without. Seriously, just way too many gang rape scenes here. We get it dude, dial it back a notch okay?

- Are triggered by animal cruelty. Hmm, let’s see, there’s a horse that gets its head whacked off with an axe, an extended scene about the stoning of a cat, and a dogs vs. bear fight for entertainment. And that’s just for starters.

- Don’t have the time to then go on and read two more long-ass sequels plus a long-ass prequel. Given all the raping and animal killing in this one I probably won’t move on to the next book, but Follett’s storytelling is so compelling I can certainly understand why millions of readers have.

Blog: https://www.confettibookshelf.com/

6.0 stars. An absolutely amazing reading experience. This one may actually make it on to my "All Time Favorite" list. I listened to the audio version of this book, which means just over 40 hours of content, and when it was finished, I actually believed it should have been LONGER. This book grabbed me from the opening pages and kept me interested and engaged throughout the entire novel (a very rare feet for a 1000 page novel). With as much as I had heard about this book, I went into it with very high expectations and they were absolutely met (if not exceeded). I can't recommend this book highly enough.

I also need to say that the narrator, John Lee, did another amazing job. Coincidentally, he was also the narrator on the only other 40+ hour audio book I ever listened to, Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton. He can certainly make a great book, even better. HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!!!

A very long story that never loses pace. Follett has applied his understanding of the thriller to a great historical novel. If you've ever look at one of those stupendous cathedrals and wondered how they came to be, this is the book for you.

I did not hate this book (hate would be too strong a word, and I can't hate it because I applaud the fact that Ken Follett attempted to write an epic novel). But I did not like it. I didn't like it from the start; his writing style hit me like a brick, but Jim thoroughly enjoyed the book that I kept trying to convince myself that I ought to give it a chance, hoping it would get better. When I was about 500 pages in, he saw how miserable I was and asked why I didn't just stop reading it, but at that point, I was invested in it; I had spent all that time getting that far, that I needed to finish it, and I couldn't wait to come to the end. I kept counting down: "Only 450 pages left; only 300 to go; last 200 pages...yay, I have 50 pages left!" Those fifty pages were the toughest to get through. By the time I was at the end, I thought it was a wasted effort - both on his part and mine.

It's so much easier to explicate on what I did not like because there were so many things:
- I loathed the writing style (he vacillated between pages and pages of highly complex architectural discourses to third-grade level simple sentences grouped into short paragraphs). Sometimes it was bearable. Other times, I wanted to pull my hair out. There were times when I felt the only time he came alive as an author was when he was discussing architecture, but these parts were so didactic in nature that it couldn't hold my interest for long periods of time.
- I did not like the author's narrative style. He had to tie everything together (causality was so prevalent throughout the text that I wondered how he didn't work in how the killing of a fly affected events 60 years later). Every single storyline was wrapped up - too neatly for my liking, in some cases. Everyone was tied to someone else (it was like playing Six Degrees); every single character had to have a denouement; every little plot twist had to be explained; closure had to be achieved, no matter how preposterous the circumstances, over time and space.
- The characterization was poor. In fact, it was appalling how two-dimensional these characters were. Good people were good. Bad people were loathsome. As time went on, the good were always suffering one thing or another; they were put upon; they were harrassed; they were constantly challenged and put to the test like Job (something Follett actually used as a sermon!). The badfolk became more oppressive over time; they were not only detestable, but they had absolutely no redeeming qualities. And to go with a typical medieval stereotype, the good were always excessively beautiful, honorable, intelligent (geniuses or savants, even!) - and if they weren't rich, they would be at the end (I half expected Havelok the Dane and his refrigerator mouth to pop up somewhere, proving once and for all that in the medieval period, to be good was to have the purest light shining out of your mouth each time you opened it). Nevertheless, the bad became uglier, became more despotic, scheming throughout life to get the better of their enemies (the goodfolk). But in the end, good always triumphed over evil; those who could, repented and were forgiven. Those who couldn't, were killed off somehow, because apparently, death is the only way an evil person gets his (or her) dues. And then everyone had a happy ending. I hate happy endings when they're so obviously contrived. And this work was so elaborately, exhaustively, thoroughly contrived. (Maybe it's not too late for me to change my mind and say I hated it. *grin*)
- Historically speaking, there was so much left to be desired. Granted, this novel was written two decades ago, and there have been new discoveries about the medieval period since Follett started his research. But he got it all wrong anyhow. His idea of medieval life was so...off, that it hurt my head to continue reading sometimes. I had to pause periodically and rant to Jim about what I currently found off-putting (for example, there weren't many literate people at the time; at the time this novel was set, there was still a distinct divide between England and Wales; reading and writing were two separate skill sets, and people who knew how to read did not necessarily know how to write and vice versa; orality was a prevalent part of storytelling back then and books not so much and yet somehow, he conflated much of both; manuscript writing was either orally dictated or copied tediously by the monks - his concept of a scriptorium was incomplete, defective - and there has been so much written about this that it saddened me; he used modern translations of medieval poetical/verse works and couldn't explain even alliterative verse form effectively - I even wonder if he knew what it was; his understanding of the languages of the period - Old English, Middle English, Latin, Norman French, Old French, Middle French, etc. - and what was spoken by the aristocrats vs. the peasants vs. the growing middle classes disgusts me; he showed a lack of understanding of medieval law, medieval rights, the social classes, gender roles, even the tales and legends of the period, in both England and France; priests were quite low on the totem pole, in terms of the religious hierarchy, and were quite disparaged yet somehow, that didn't quite come across in this novel...I could go on and on, but I won't).

And the historical part of the novel I just found lacking. There are enough histories and chronicles, contemporaneously written, of the time, that he did not have to deviate much from history. There is so much written about the period between the death of Henry I through the civil wars between the Empress Matilda and King Stephen, to the time that Henry II ascended the throne (including the martyrdom of Thomas a Beckett), that I don't quite understand how he couldn't have mined the chronicles for better material. I understand that this is why it's called historical fiction, and that there will always be some element of fiction interspersed with historical fact. But the fictional aspects usually have to do with surrounding characters and situations that bolster the history. The fiction is not necessarily to the history itself. Many times, when writing historical fiction, the author has to beware the pitfalls of creating a revisionist retelling, interspersing his or her own ideals or beliefs of what should have been to what was. If this novel had been marketed as a revisionary narrative, it would have been okay. But it wasn't. I'm just glad that the historical aspect of the novel just served as the background and not the real story. Because then, I probably would've stopped reading.

The premise was a good one and held a lot of promise. It could've been a great historical epic had it been handled by a more assured writer. By someone who was more of a visionary, someone who had the patience to do exhaustive research or who knew how to craft richly developed characters. It needed an author who understood the epic genre, who knew how to mold the epic, who knew how to keep the narrative going, seemlessly binding time with narration and the human condition, without resorting to stereotypes and grating drama. And most importantly, it needed someone who understood when the story had been told; that while there will always be other stories to tell, that each book has its own natural end, and that these stories may not belong in this book.

Ken Follett may be a bestselling author of suspense novels (and even historical fiction such as Pillars of the Earth and World without End), but he is no writer of epics. Compared to writers of historical fiction such as Edward Rutherford, James Michener, Bernard Cornwell or Margaret George, Ken Follett has a long way to go.

Iga Świątek made me do it

I devour books. That is my euphemism for being so obsessed that I can't put them down and live my life until I finish them. For shorter books, that's generally not a problem, but for the 974 page Pillars of the Earth...well, let's just say we ran out of food, my children clung to my legs asking for food, and the floors did not get vacuumed for a good five days while I whittled away at this book.

CLIFF HANGER: This book is not a cliff-hanger-at-the-end-of-every-chapter kind of book, which makes it easier to read it in multiple sittings. However, Follett does such a masterful job of character development, that I found myself wanting to know what was going to happen next whether the end of the chapter contained a cliffhanger ending or not.

CHARACTER DEV'T: Each character is so beautifully defined and fleshed out, that they become almost real. I felt that I knew them personally, that I could accurately predict how they would react in different situations. None of them were 100% good or bad, just like in real life. Some priests were holy, others evil; some were rich people with big hearts, others with small minds and evil intentions; some poor farmers were judgmental, w/narrow-minded attitudes, others opened their doors to strangers.

PLOT/PACE: Foreshadowing was a very powerful convention that Follett skillfully weaved in and out of every chapter. It gave subtle hints, but never so overt as to suggest that the reader may be an imbecile. Backstories meander and come to closure at such a nice pace, that it always feels like something is happening and things are being resolved, for better or for worse.

THEMES: My favorite theme was that natural consequences followed the actions of the characters. (I'm still a bit out of sorts after reading the deus-ex-machina-riddled Breaking Dawn, where all the natural consequences of three books worth of actions were completely erased-ugh.) There was a natural ebb and flow of triumph and misfortunes in Pillars of the Earth. Good things happened to bad people and bad things happened to good people, just like in real life. Follett does not try to save his characters from themselves, or from each other, and I enjoyed that very much.

STRONG WOMEN: I absolutely adored the strong women in this book! What a joy to read about Aliena, carving out her own future after her world had been turned upside down! Life knocked her down plenty, but each time, she got up, made a plan, and triumphed eventually. Ellen, and Agnes in her own way, were also strong women.

OVERALL IMPRESSION: As strange as it sounds, with all of the despair and misery that took place, the overarching take home for me, was HOPE. In the face of overwhelming adversity, these characters triumphed. The road was hard and the journey was long, but they CHOSE hope. They CHOSE faith. And in the end, that was all that mattered.

Pillars of the Earth will be on my favorite books list for a very long time.

Confession time: This is not a book I would have picked out for myself. First of all, look at the size of this kitten squisher! Second of all, Amanda's hate-filled review of it is one of my favorite reviews on Goodreads. However, it's one of my girlfriend's favorite books and when she suggested I give it a read, I knew what was good for me. Lucky for me, I enjoyed it.

Pillars of the Earth is a multigenerational tale about the construction of a cathedral in a fictitious English town in the 1100s. Many threads are followed for it's nigh-1000 page girth. Tom Builder goes from being an expectant father to a widow to a master builder. Philip becomes a prior and the ruler of Kingsbridge. And lets not forget Jack, Aliena, Richard, Waleran, that bastard William Hamleigh, or any of the many other characters.

Ken Follett was primarily known as a thriller writer before Pillars and it shows. Every time things appear to be going right for the good guys and it looks like the cathedral is back on track, another monkey wrench is thrown into the works. For a book with very little in the way of action, I was enthralled. You can squeeze a lot of plot complications in nearly 1000 pages and Follett jammed in as many as he could. I have to admire the kind of planning it took to write something like this.

As I said before, I always found the size of this thing daunting but I probably shouldn't have. It's a best seller, and best sellers aren't known for being difficult reads. Since Follett is a thriller writer, he tended to keep things to the point for the most part, though I thought he was ignoring Elmore Leonard's rule about not writing the parts people skip a few times.

I don't really want to say much about the plot for fear of spoiling anything. It's a long read but the ending is worth the time it takes to get there.

Parting thoughts (may contain spoilers):
- Tom Builder sure jumped into bed with Ellen pretty quickly. Agnes' body wasn't even cold yet.
- Lots of rape in the 1100's
- Since Kingsbridge is fictitious, does that make Pillars of the Earth historical fantasy?
- I really hate William Hamleigh.

I would not call this a great, or even a good, work of literature. It is pulp... pulp all the way. But I read it as a teen, and loved the beautiful wenches, the evil villains, the bloody battles and the explicit sex scenes (including rape). I also loved the medieval setting, the way history was mixed with fiction - all the intrigues and mysteries. This is an old-fashioned blood-and-thunder yarn.

But most of all, I loved Jack with his passion to build a cathedral, even in times of turbulence... oh yes. I know that passion to create, and the sense of satisfaction every engineer feels while staring at his finished creation. Oh Yes!