Anmol Sagar

1200 pages in small print…. I knew reading this Ken Follet book was going to be a daunting task. But more than daunting, it turned out to be an all consuming task.

For me books are high involvement items. When I’m reading one, I find myself researching things about it and finding out more about actual events referred to in the book. So after the initial 100 pages, (where I was tempted to throw away the book more the once) the book transformed into a different world that I found myself wondering and researching about.

Set in a small town in UK (Kingsbridge) in early 1300s, the story chronicles the life and times of a cross section of protagonists. Royalty, Peasantry and Clergy…the book shared the struggles and victories of people from different backgrounds and whose lives intertwine through the 50 decades the book covers.  The commerce vs the church issues, the basic medical knowledge and treatments, the hardships of peasants, the destruction of the Black Death and the challenges of basic scientific knowledge, made me think about these times in wonder. We take so much of the knowledge and things we have today for granted… its only when we read about these times does one realize that we have so much to thank human endeavor and curiosity for.

I especially found the section on the Black Death intriguing. They made me recall some paintings and models of the plague that I once saw in a museum in Canada. I remember looking at the paintings and wondering about the destruction. Only after reading the book did I grasp the real magnitude of the tragedy. 1/3^rd of Europe’s population was wiped out! That’s about 75 million people….

All in all, the book is interesting, a tad long, but worth the time. A book recommended only for the brave hearted.