Pillars of the Earth

Ken Follett describes The Pillars as a "word of mouth" book. He feels that its popularity is due largely to "the personal recommendation of one reader to another." (source: the author's preface to the Jan.'99 Plume edition).
Interesting, since this is exactly how I myself was introduced to the book. While at a friend's I noticed it on his shelf, and as I thumbed through it I was literally shocked at the animation with which a few Pillar-cultists in the room began DEMANDING that I read it. It was a non-optional situation. I took. I read.
It's become one of my favorite novels of all time, and it's definitely true... there's just something about it that makes you want to tell everyone else to read it. Once, while queued up in the aisle of a de-boarding 737 the guy behind me saw my book and said "Great story isn't it?" Seriously, if you read it, you will tell others to read it... Follett is 100% accurate on that!

So what makes it so great?
Well for one thing, here we have immense subject matter (the building of a huge cathedral), and for a period of over fifty fictional years Follett pulls this thread through all of the lives of those who will serve either in the strengthening or smashing of this cathedral-dream. What results is all of a piece. The story is so captivating that at times I had to stop reading and tell myself to settle down. So believable at every turn. Secondly, it is remarkable in the way it stays in the memory. Usually a book of this length tends to sort of blur soon after the initial reading. But now, almost a year after I've read it, intricacies of the story are still seared in the memory. I can still turn to any page at random and immediately the particular scene is re-kindled in my imagination, the setting as clear as when I originally read it.

Finally, the book is as great as its characters. It would be difficult to find anywhere in recent literature a character as calculating and devious as Waleran Bigod; as devoted and consistent as Philip; as unassuming as Tom Builder; as noble and captivating as Aliena; as gifted and winsome as Jack; as resourceful and spontaneous as Ellen... and the villainous evil that lurks and erupts in William Hamleigh makes Shakespeare's Iago look like Winnie The Pooh!
Follett says in his 1999 preface: "Many people asked me to write a sequel. (I will, one day)."
We must be patient. When it comes out, I predict that the only disappointing thing about that book is that it too... will end.

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