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S'està carregant… An Instance of the Fingerpost (1997 original; edició 2000)de Iain Pears (Autor)
Informació de l'obraAn Instance of the Fingerpost de Iain Pears (1997)
  
Historical Fiction (126) Five star books (126) » 17 més Top Five Books of 2013 (542) Books With a Twist (23) Favorite Long Books (108) Books Read in 2020 (2,054) 20th Century Literature (596) One Book, Many Authors (145) SantaThing 2014 Gifts (105) Unread books (434) Authors from England (103) Set in the 1600s (6)
One of the few books I've read more than once. A great story told by four unreliable narrators. (  )1   jimgosailing | Nov 18, 2021 |  We are in England in the 1660s. Charles II has been restored to the throne following years of civil war and Cromwell's short-lived republic. Oxford is the intellectual seat of the country, a place of great scientific, religious, and political ferment. A fellow of New College is found dead in suspicious circumstances. A young woman is accused of his murder. We hear the story of the death from four witnesses: an Italian physician intent on claiming credit for the invention of blood transfusion; the son of an alleged Royalist traitor; a master cryptographer who has worked for both Cromwell and the king; and a renowned Oxford antiquarian. Each tells his own version of what happened. Only one reveals the extraordinary truth. Daniel464 | Oct 15, 2021 | I found this book a tad slow in the beginning, but as you move along you'll find that the world created within is incredible in its detail. The main shock came somewhere around page 180 (this isn't a spoiler, don't worry) when the story being told came to an end. I wondered if 420 pages of epilogue was a little overdone, but i found that the book is actually broken into four parts with four different characters telling their versions of the same series of events. The pieces slowly come together throughout the book as you learn who to trust and who to be wary of. I really enjoyed this format and especially found myself wrapped up in the second and fourth sections. The third section is slightly rough because the character talking at that point is not redeemable to me in any way, but that's always a matter of opinion. If you like old style "who-dun-it" tales interwoven with religious fervor, then this is right up your alley. (  ) LukeGoldstein | Aug 10, 2021 | couldn't really like the protagonist ritaer | Jan 9, 2021 | Endless. Tedious. I abhorred the writing style. It is deliberately annoying. (  ) breic | Sep 7, 2020 |
 If you liked Umberto Eco's "Name of the Rose," you should run to buy Iain Pears' lavishly erudite historical mystery "An Instance of the Fingerpost."... If Eco's book was a sly demonstration of semiotics, the study of signs, Pear's is an exercise in theories of knowledge. Theological disputation, cryptography, religious dissent, medical experiments, moral philosophy, even the Turkish-Venetian war over Crete are all dealt with in what sometimes seems an entertaining encyclopedia of the second half of the 17th century.... When the denouement comes, it is with a new and final twist, one whose quality of surprise is the final proof of this talented author's almost infinite capacity to replace one understanding of things with another.  Successful literary thrillers in the mold of Umberto Eco's ''Name of the Rose'' are the stuff of publishers' dreams, and in Pears's novel they may have found a near-perfect example of the genre. It is literary -- if that means intelligent and well written -- and for the reader who likes to be teased, who likes his plots as baroque and ingenious as possible, ''An Instance of the Fingerpost'' will not disappoint.... [T]wo, perhaps three, of the four narrators are men hard to like or care about. It was not until the final 150 pages that I found myself being moved. The feel of this last section is bolder, more imaginative, mysterious even, as though the novel had suddenly transcended itself and broken free of the trappings of the genre. ...a novel about deception and self-deception, about the scientific method and Jesuitical chicanery, above all about political expedience and religious transcendence. Every sentence in the book is as solid as brick -- and as treacherous as quicksand.... [Y]ou could reread the novel just to savor the subtle tricks of omission and misdirection.... Iain Pears has written an impressively original and audaciously imaginative intellectual thriller. Don't miss it. Rashomon meets The Name of the Rose in a triumphant triple-decker that knocks every speck of dust from the historical mystery.
A novel on the way we interpret events to suit our purpose. The protagonists are four people giving evidence in a murder in 17th century England. One blames the crime on too much authority, another on the lack of it. A look at the controversies of the day, from medical experiments to religious freethinking. No s'han trobat descripcions de biblioteca. |
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 Google Books — S'està carregant…GèneresClassificació Decimal de Dewey (DDC)823.914 — Literature English {except North American} English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999LCC (Clas. Bibl. Congrés EUA)ValoracióMitjana: (3.93)
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Iain Pears, An Instance Of The Fingerpost
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