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A life long dream of a man to build the most glorious cathedral in the world.
Simple, right?
The book is simple but the story - not quite.
This dream is shared by three men - Philip the monk, Tom the builder and his stepson and apprentice Jack.
The book is about their lives and work and struggle against injustice in times of the most brutal civil war of the age.
This is also the story of Aliena, a nobleman's daughter who loses all and, bound by a sacred oath, has to start from nothing to regain everything.


You know how they say something is so bad, it's good? I've yet to encounter an example of that in books I read, because I don't even pick up books I know I will not like, until I picked up "The Pillars of the Earth".
I've tried to read this book a few years ago, after watching and enjoying the TV mini-series of the same name. As always, the original is best, so I tried reading it in English. And could not get past the first 40 or so pages. It was unreadable. In English, the book feels like it was written by a twelve years old child - "he went there, did this, said that".
I forget who I'm trying to quote here, but 'the best way to tell a story is to tell it, not to describe it' and unfortunately, Follett cannot do it.
In the past year, I became quite obsessed with medieval England and I decided to take on the book again, this time in an Hebrew translation. And, oh, what a relief - it did not feel so forced and artificial anymore. The pacing was nice and the plot was good, if completely contrived - everything that could go wrong, did.
What I did like, is all the characters, particularly Philip, William, Aliena and Jack. And here is another thing - unlike some of the brilliant authors I've been reading recently, Follett doesn't write people. He doesn't even write characters - he writes archetypes. Or rather cartboard cutouts, because I doubt he was the first. None of the characters he writes about are original, none of them the average reader hasn't met a dozen times in their literary travels.
After the first few chapters it was clear as is the summer's sun that this novel is going to have a happy end, so that was rather nice.
I was a bit worried it won't have, and unfortunately I just knew that if it didn't, I wouldn't care less.

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