The Evening and the Morning

 

 The Evening and the Morning – by Ken Follett

Yet another entry in Ken Follett’s “The Pillars of the Earth” series.  If you’re unfamiliar with the novel “The Pillars of the Earth”, I would advise you to stop reading this review, and immediately snag a copy and start reading.  You’ll be hooked.  Not only is it the consensus that it’s the best novel written by Ken Follett, but many will argue that it’s one of the very best they’ve ever read.  It’s certainly in MY top 5.  So it shouldn’t really surprise anyone that the author has tried to follow up that story with two sequels, and now, this prequel.

Is this book (or either of the sequels) as good?  Nope.  Not even close.  That should not be a deterrent, however.  After all, trying to match the quality of such a piece of work is a mammoth task that even the best wouldn’t be able to replicate.  So judged on their own, these three books are good overall, yet to be fair they’re also a tad trite.  The stories told are good, yet predictable.  Of the three “other” books in the series, I probably enjoyed this one better than the other two.  It was a fun read, and overall, very easy to digest.  Even at 913 pages, it goes by quite fast.  An experienced reader can easily consume 100 of these pages during one sitting. So the length of the book shouldn’t be intimidating.

In addition to this series of 4 books, Follett has also written another trilogy over the last ten years or so called “The Century Trilogy” about a cast of individuals living throughout the highs and lows of the twentieth century in various nations across the globe.  I mention this because there are many similarities that run through all of these books, and sometimes these similarities are a bit too redundant. The faithful reader tends to roll their eyes, emit a heavy sigh, and bemoan out loud a sentiment such as “Seriously?  AGAIN?”  These redundant similarities of characters and traits in these seven books include:

1.       The smart and resourceful woman.  She’s head and shoulders above every other character in the story in terms of smarts, but she’s living at a time in history where the world was still a man’s world.  So she finds herself unfairly subjugated and forced to endeavor an existence that’s humiliating and overtly unfair. If this woman is a possessor of any kind of wealth or prestige, her family insists on marrying her off to her “social equal” which usually means a wealthy aristocrat who will treat her like a piece of used furniture.  Throughout her miserable existence, she fantasizes about a man who is more her equal in terms of intelligence and kindness as opposed to wealth and stature (see #3 below).

 

2.       The evil satanic member of the church clergy.  In a time when religion and politics were one and the same, many of our important bishops and priests in Follet’s stories had absolutely no love of God nor their fellow man. Instead, they use their position for, not only greed, but for every sinful pleasure imaginable – whether blackmail, gambling, and/or plenty of illicit sex.

 

3.       The smart resourceful good guy.  While neither rich nor powerful, this guy has a wealth of smarts that allow him to survive in a time when a year of bad crops could result in the starvation of a rather large chunk of the population.  This man can look at any situation and figure how to use his wits to utilize said situation to his advantage.  In addition to being incredibly smart, he’s also unbelievably kind and benevolent to his community.  He usually falls in love with a woman who’s rich, powerful, or some sort of royal (see #1 above), which means he’ll never be able to possess her heart. So he can only dream from a distance about unrequited love that he knows he’ll never achieve.

 

4.       A lot of graphic, overly descriptive sex scenes with unnecessary commentary about things better left inside a locked bedroom.  These descriptions are not at all welcome and are disgusting enough to make a purveyor of pornography puke in disgust.  Mr. Follett, if you’re reading this, we can do without descriptions of sex in your books that deal with bodily fluids and/or unshaven parts of the body.

 

5.       At least one unwanted pregnancy.  Usually between a woman and her husband who she doesn’t love, or between a woman and a man who ISN’T her husband who she DOES love.  (See #1, #2, possibly #3, and #4 above). Or it could also be something equally as disheartening such as a conception as the sad result of the woman being graphically raped.

So it shouldn’t surprise anyone who is a faithful reader of Follett when we run into variations of such scenarios over and over again.  Once you expect the expected though, it really isn’t too big a distraction, and one can still find things in the story to enjoy.  It can get a bit obnoxious at times, however.  What this book easily turns into is an 11^th century soap opera.  There are so many elements and subplots within this overall story that would warrant a full series of episodes rather than a single movie if a decision is ever made to bring this story to the visual medium, and they’re all incredibly soap opera-ish.  The good people do something good, only to be thwarted by the bad people.  The bad people then make the good people miserable for a considerable amount of time, until some twist of fate puts the good people back on top again.  Repeat ad nauseum.

I should also point out that it isn’t necessary at all for you to have read any of the other books in the series to enjoy this one.  I’ve actually read The Pillars of the Earth twice (Rare for me. It’s that good), yet I couldn’t tell you where any of the connections between these characters in this story relate with the original.   If I had to guess, I would say that this ten-year story takes place about 50 or 60 years before the original novel.

So although I enjoyed the book, not only is it not necessary to be familiar with the original story, but it’s not even crucial that you even pick this thing up.  You won’t really miss anything. This is just an excuse for Follett to tell yet another story during, what seems to be, a favorite time period for him.  It may not be as memorable as some of his others, but he does a grand job keeping one’s attention and interest for over 900 pages.