The Longest Read

On the way home today, I closed, for the last time, 'An Instance of the Fingerpost' by Iain Pears. This is a pretty big moment for me as opening this book, digesting a few pages than closing it has been a daily part of my life for an inordinately long time. I can't begin to figure out why, it's a good book, it's less than seven hundred pages, it's true it didn't have me on the edge of my seat but I've read a lot worse!

The story is set in 1660s Oxford and centers around a murder. The four main figures write their differing and unreliable accounts of the murder. The murder itself is almost secondary to the story which is more about the state of the country after the British civil war, the King's recent return, the struggle of the Catholic religion to take hold and the new 'scientific' method sweeping the learned community at the time, embraced by some and shunned by others.

A lot of the background characters are famous in history for their, then, revolutionary use of experimentation in science and others, their forward thinking philosophies. A story with goings on and characters from British history and a cleaver, well thought out plot, it's a good read, but what I just can't figure out is why it feels like I've been reading it since 1660!

The only theory I can think up with is based the change of pace I went through while reading it. The first 'story' felt like I normal read, the narrator of the second 'story' claimed to have read the first and said it was full of lies, his narrative was the 'truth' and goes about retelling the story with this own twist. The third narrator did the same, as did the fourth.

Something I've never noticed or given a second thought to when reading is the fact I completely trust the narrator and why not? This is, after all, the person telling the story, you have to believe him or her as without them there is no story! Maybe that's it, I thought, I believed the first story (I know it's fiction, I didn't literary believe him) but all the others I read with a fair amount of distrust towards the narrators, I was questioning, thinking back to what the others had to say. This I would like to say is a very bad thing, I had no idea how essential it is to trust the voice telling the story if you truly want to get into it.

As I say it's only a theory, maybe I'm just having an off few months and I missed something essential, either way, I thought this was an enjoyable read and would recommend it, though you should put some time aside to read it.