Ken Follett’s World Without End

Posted on April 17th, 2008 by Richard Catto 1,447 views

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I recently finished reading all 1111 pages of his latest novel, World Without End (WWE), by the extraordinarily talented British author, Ken Follett. WWE was published on September 18 2007.

Follett became a best selling author at the age of 27 (in 1978) with the publication of the WWII spy thriller novel, Eye of the Needle, which was subsequently made into a film starring Donald Sutherland (father of Keifer Sutherland).

WWE is a sequel to Follett’s wildly popular Pillars of the Earth (POTE) novel which was first published in 1989. POTE was a runaway best seller, and is a brilliant and fascinating read which will hold your attention until the very last page. In fact, you may suffer a mild depression when you come to its end. Nineteen years later, it still sells over 100 000 copies a year.

When I discovered (earlier this year) that Follett had written a sequel to POTE, I was immediately interested in reading it because of the immense enjoyment I had previously derived from reading POTE over 15 years ago. I decided to purchase WWE as a belated birthday gift for my father, knowing that I would get a chance to read it after he was done. I picked up a hardcover copy from Exclusive Books in Constantia Village for R259, which they gift wrapped for me. My father devoured the novel in about two days flat. I still don’t know how he manages to get through books so quickly. It took me well over a week to get through WWE, but then I read every word and savoured each paragraph.

Having finished, my overall impression is that World Without End is not as great a novel as Pillars of the Earth was. It did not satisfy me the way that POTE did. The reason for this is that in the original story about the town of Kingsbridge, most of the problems were external to the town. It was outsiders who caused the problems. In WWE, it is the priors of Kingsbridge who hold back the town’s development and economic prosperity with their self-defeating policies.

Sadly, there are no examples of reconciliation between bitter foes. No characters reform themselves into better people. Ralph, for instance, starts off as a young lad who uncaringly kills a young girl’s three legged dog (charmingly named Hop) with a bow and arrow and by the end of the book has become even more rotten, coercing the same girl (now a married woman with children) into an unwanted sexual relationship with him, and this after he discovers that he has previously fathered a child by her. Nothing softened his venomous attitude as one might have hoped. She kills him. All rather depressing.

WWE is set in the 14th Century which is the time of the advent of the Bubonic plagues which so devastated Europe, culling off over half of all human population in the Old World. Follett conveniently uses the mechanism of the plague to rid himself of (nearly) all his troublesome characters whilst retaining all the best loved ones. There was no tragedy to mourn. In my opinion, Caris Wooler should have died of the plague and an eternally heartbroken Merthin Bridger should have erected his angel (having her face) on top of his spire in loving memory of her. But no-one who died of the plague in WWE was anyone we became particularly attached to. They were all good riddance departures.

Caris is one of the central characters of WWE. After years of uphill struggle against one bloody idiot prior after another, she finally gets to the point of being in charge when she is elected prioress of the nunnery. Shortly thereafter, her efforts to save people from the plague (which had been working) and treat patients effectively in the hospital are defeated by the idiot males in positions of religious authority. It was at this point (and many other times) when I became so frustrated with all the bullshit ignorant politics of the situation that I wanted to bail on the whole town. I wanted her to stand up and shout, “You’re all a bunch of idiots and you can all go to the Devil!” But it didn’t happen. She hung around still. Eventually she resigned from the nunnery and the hospital she had run so competently began to be ignored by the town’s people who came to realise that going there served only to hasten their death from whatever they suffered (or what they contracted from others whilst there).

Towards the end of the book we discover what was in the letter that the young Sir Thomas Langley almost paid with his life to safeguard. It was a fairly huge revelation with massive potential consequences but nothing comes of it. It is buried, its explosive secrets never seeing the light of day. Instead of being published, its secrets are negotiated away in exchange for ridding Kingsbridge of the last of the idiot priors.

Merthin Bridger was another central character and yet, despite his brilliance and competence, he didn’t grab me enough to motivate me to spend time telling you his story. A part of me wanted to tell you the whole story of the book, but I’ve decided that I’d prefer to rather give you these disjointed tastes and impressions of the book in the hopes that you will out and purchase the book and read it for yourself and then return here to give me your opinions.

Despite all my lamentations and frustations with WWE, it was still a good,absorbing and easy read, well worth the purchase price.

Tags: fiction, Ken Follett, Kingsbridge, novel, Pillars of the Earth, World Without End
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