Title: An Instance of the Fingerpost
Rating: 5 Stars
On the surface, it’s a simple story. The year is 1663. The setting is Oxford. A man dies. It’s determined that he’s been murdered. A woman is accused. She confesses. She is hung. Justice has been done.
Since the novel is over 700 pages, it’s safe to assume that it’s a bit more complicated than that. And indeed it is.
First of all, the same story is told from four different points of view. In one way or another, all of the narrators are unreliable (hence the Rashomon in the blog title). One version is told by Marco Da Cola, a foppish younger son of an Venetian trading family stopping over in Oxford on his way to London to help settle his family’s business. A second version is told by Jack Prestcott, the madly impulsive son of a disgraced nobleman trying to prove his father’s innocence and restore his family lands. The third is John Wallis (a historical figure), a coldly calculating man that was the greatest English mathematician before Newton that was a master of code breaking. The fourth is Anthony Wood (another historical figure), an archivist / historian seemingly more interested in pouring over dusty books than social intercourse.
What’s fascinating about this story is that not only are the narrators unreliable, but actual historical events occurring at that point in time are unreliable as well. Considering the fact that in the last 200 years or so, Queen Victoria ruled for 63 years and Queen Elizabeth has ruled for 70 years (and counting!), we associate England with stability.
England in the 1660’s was in a state of chaos. First of all, this is the aftermath of the English Civil War. Charles I and parliamentary forces fought each other for most of the 1640’s. The parliamentarians triumphed and, shocking the world, executed Charles I in 1649. His son Charles II was exiled. Royalist forces were purged at all levels of the society, no more so than in Oxford. In the 1650’s, various Royalist factions attempted to overthrow the republican commonwealth and/or assassinate the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. After Cromwell died of natural causes in 1659, his son ruled for a short period of time before Charles II, previously exiled, assumed the throne, albeit under parliamentary rule. The previously exiled Royalists fought to regain their lost positions while those that had flourished under the commonwealth pivoted to accommodate their changed political situation.
That wasn’t all of the chaos. A century previous, Henry VIII, angered that the Catholic church would not sanction his divorce, took over Catholic property in England and established himself at the head of English Protestantism. The Catholic church, Catholic nations such as France and Spain, not to mention devout Catholic Englishmen, understandably did not take too well to this and actively tried to reinstate Catholicism. A century later, this fight was still raging. Catholics were still being oppressed. English kings were suspected of being secret Catholics. Due to the very nature of the protestant movement, radical schisms were popping up that the now doctrine protestant religion had to stamp out.
One of the fun things about this novel is that all of this is incorporated into the plot. So, while the basic plot is unfolding, in the background are religious schisms, assassination plots, and political machinations. Iain Pears does excellent work painting the picture of life during the English Restoration. Pears also successfully integrates real historical figures with the story being told. The philosopher John Locke, Robert Boyle (the father of chemistry), the architect Christopher Wren, and famous political figures like the Earl of Clarendon all make appearances within the novel.
The eyewitness accounts of the four narrators are all colored by the narrators’ backgrounds, prejudices, and hidden motivations. Da Cola, the outsider from the continent, a haughty courtier, is generally bemused by the English barbarous actions and customs. Prestcott, absolutely consumed in his quest to prove his father’s innocence, is blinded by all else. Wallis, the cryptographer that has supported both the commonwealth and for the Royalists, is paranoid and sees conspiracies everywhere. Even Wood, seemingly the impartial observer, has his own blind spot that affects his writings. In this way as well it is reminiscent of Rashomon. The last narrator in that film seems to be impartial until he too is exposed as shading his truth to obscure his own motivations.
Da Cola is the most enigmatic figure in the book. Who is he? A fopish gallant completely at a loss in the backwater of Oxford? A murderous mercenary? A Catholic priest?
Who killed Robert Grove? Was it Sarah Blundy, who confessed to the crime? Or was it Thomas Ken, who was being kept from a promotion by Grove? Or was it an accident and the poison was meant for another?
At the center of the mystery is Sarah Blundy. Was she a desperately poor harlot that sought vengeance on Grove? Was she a strong, independent woman in a time when neither of those attributes were prized and was punished for it? Or was she something else nearly impossible to contemplate?
Pears successfully managed to write a novel that was a marriage of historical fiction and mystery with a dash of post modernism (ie unreliable narration). Since I enjoy all of these different types of fiction, this novel was pretty much designed for me and so, at least for me, it delivered.
dorkenstein 