World Without End

            

I've just finished reading World Without End by Ken Follett.  I should have written the review as I read in order to keep track of the good and bad, but lesson learned and here we go. 

WWE is the follow-on book to Pillars of the Earth, a book about cathedral building in England in the 1100's.  I remember liking Pillars and recommending it as a worthy, entertaining read.  WWE takes place in the same village during the 1300's with characters being related to the characters in Pillars.  Both books are long but WWE seems verbose and wordy and filled with plot necessity in order to make it as long as Pillars.  (I didn't think anyone got paid by the word anymore.)  It feels like it's been filled with trite, repetitive, or unnecessary phrases and wording.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a non-enlightening, cerebrally numbing read, but this was way, way too much and way, way too long to meet that criteria.

This book feels like Nora Roberts, Clive Cussler, and Will and Ariel Durant fell into a big vat of "let's write a book" and World Without End was the result.  

Unfortunately, the great history (the Durants) gets overwhelmed.  There's way too much Roberts style fluff: "Gwenda was heartsick. Her hopes were dashed. Annet had been too clever" and ample Cussler macho: "Ralph took the girl's hand and placed it on the altar.  He drew his knife.  With a swift movement, he cut off one of her fingers.  His heavy blade easily split her small bones..."  Really? His heavy blade - her hopes were dashed?  Really? 

 One of the main characters Caris, was the requisite independent, highly intelligent, resourceful, attractive female who in the 1300's was able to lead the men in the village into enlightenment.  She had an abortion, became a nun, experienced lesbianism, and in the end married the love of her life who she had spurned for 20+ years. Whenever she encountered a bright female child who asked questions other children never even considered, she would wonder to herself who this child reminded her of while someone else would comment that the child reminded them of Caris.  Reading this once was too often but this happened more than once in the book. Caris violated the laws of the church and laws of the land but was always "saved at the last moment."

Her love interest, Merthin, like her was highly unusual and very intelligent.  He too was a leader and saved the village from demise on more than one occasion.  After repeatedly begging Caris to marry him and being relentlessly spurned he moves to Italy and marries Sofia.  Italy is plague ridden, his wife and all her family die.  Although Merthin contracts the plague he recovers and experiences this amazing epiphany where he “realizes” he never loved Sofia like Caris and he must take his baby daughter, overlooked by the plague, back to England and beg Caris again to marry him.  Which she doesn’t do again.  Merthin hangs around for another 5 years until Caris has fulfilled all her goals, has nothing else important on her plate and finally finds him worthy of her hand in marriage. Puke! 

It would seem that Follett's recurring theme in WWE was the supreme female beating down the chauvinistic male.  But, Merthin is not chauvinistic at all especially for the 1300’s.  He is understanding and supportive of Caris becoming independent, successful in her own right but sharing a life with him and having children.  Although he becomes highly successful and rich, to me he lacked character and enough backbone to find Caris unlikeable, assuming the reverse role of female chauvinist pig.

Follett used simple prose and generally simple vocabulary but every once in a while would throw in a word that seemed out of place.  Because I neglected to make notes while reading this I can’t find them, but trust me the words are there.  He used words (one of which was "toady") repetitively enough to wonder whether he had ever used a thesaurus.

I found myself skimming through the final few chapters just to see all the bad guys get their just due, and the good guys triumph. WWE was rather predictable and I was a grouch most of the day after finishing because I felt I had wasted my time reading it.