An Instance of the Fingerpost – Iain Pears
The last time I read An Instance of the Fingerpost I was on a plane back to Australia. I remember not being able to put it down – it lasted me most of the flight and stayed with me for a long time afterwards. I have just read it for a second time as a part of my reading group, and I am pleased to say I enjoyed it just as much, and gained even more out of it this time that I had last time.
Set in Seventeenth Century England, the story is one of a murder and a woman who is made to pay for that murder. Dr Robert Grove is found poisoned in his Oxford college room, and from that incident unfolds several hypotheses concerning who was responsible. Ultimately, Sarah Blundy – the poor daughter of an anti-Royalist rebel, is blamed and she is sentenced to death. However, as simple as this plot sounds, what makes this book so fascinating is that the same story is told from four different perspectives. Each perspective is completely different from the others and as you get engrossed in each one, it appears that that must be the truth. Yet they can’t all be the truth, because not one of them is in complete agreement with the other.
The stories are told by Marco da Cola – a visiting Italian who is fascinated by the burgeoning fields of science and medicine; Jack Prescott – a student at Oxford on a quest to exonerate his dead father from accusations of treason; John Wallis – a mathemetician and code breaker for both Cromwell and later The King; and Anthony Wood, an Oxford historian. The latter two and many of the characters encountered in the book are based on actual historical figures, although Pears has given them voices and personalities which bring them to life in a way that dry history could never do. Each person has their own agenda and set of beliefs and it is only when you get to the end of the book that you realise how strongly these two things have affected the teller’s perceptions.
Are any of the stories true? It is difficult to tell – the book is an exercise in the post-modernist belief that because truth is in the eye of the beholder, then there is no objective truth. Although the story told by Anthony Wood which is (appropriately) the final story, appears to carry the greatest weight as he was the one and only person of the four who was actually present for many of the events. His assessment of the other three appears to be based on verifiable fact, although even he falls victim to emotion and therefore his perception is clearly skewed by it in some instances.
I love the way the four stories come together in the end. I love how Wood’s observations provide explanations for aspects of the previous stories which seemed so certain when written down. I love how the period is brought to life by the characters and descriptions. And I love the fact that even on a second reading, I was still surprised. The erudition which is prevalent throughout the work indicates how much research the author put in to this book and, in my opinion, the masterpiece which has resulted is one that can be read several times. I highly recommend both the book, and the author.
Rating: 10/10
ISBN: 0-09-975181-X
Publisher: Vintage
Year: 1997
Date Finished: 21st November 2008
Pages: 698
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I still haven’t read this, as I’ve been put off by its length. It does sound good though, and as I should have more reading time over the holidays, I will look out for it. Have you read any other of Pears’s books?
I haven’t, although I have The Dream of Scipio at home (on my impossibly enormous TBR pile). I was reading reviews of his other books on LibraryThing and they were mixed. Several people seemed to think this was his best one, but I won’t judge until I have read some of his others.
I read it not long after it came out and loved it. I now have a slew of novels by Iain Pears to read. It’s good to know that it holds up on a re-read.