The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 10 November 1999
It is 1663, and England's king Charles II has ascended the throne after a turbulent and violent period in the country's history, dominated by the dictatorial Oliver Cromwell. In Oxford, site of various troubled events itself, things are beginning to calm down, but religious and political affinities are still extremely touchy. In the midst of all this, one man dies mysteriously in his rooms at the college. Between the gaps of historical document, Iain Pears pours a story of mystery and intrigue, as told by four different narrators, two fictional, and two historical. The victim himself is a historical figure, but one of whom little seems to be really known. A young woman is tried, convicted (on her confession) and hanged for his murder. Yet all is not as it seems. The first narrator, Marco da Cola of Venice, seems innocent and believable enough, but the subsequent narrators cast doubt on his story, as well as on each others'. Pears manages to involve various characters in the true historical drama of the time, in a web of political and personal intrigue, all to one extent or another involving the Oxford murder. A dizzying array of historical figures appear in this book. As fascinating as that is at moments, the device of four narrators here lacks subtlety and their voices are a little too similar. By the time I reached the last, perhaps most reliable, narrator, I was a little bored by the story as a whole. Perhaps, too, I found myself tiring of the endlessly complex intrigues that Pears was presuming amongst the historical figures. Though this gives the history a human caste, and illuminates the history nicely, it grew somewhat tiresome, and left me wondering what the real history was like. At first a compelling book, though, and refreshingly unromantic in its depiction of the period.