I eventually read this book!
It has been on countless best seller lists and when I was in the UK a couple of years back, this was the Next Best Thing. It was huge, had been on the Richard and Judy show aswell as Oprah and when ever there is huge hype over a book, I get pulled in two directions. One – is it as good as they say it is should I read it? or, nah, def cant be as good as they say it is, wont read it.
I did start it two years ago, I booked it out of the library and read the first chapter. I couldn’t really get into it, so abandoned it for another time. That another time was recently, and I couldn’t put it down. I took it out from book club, thinking I really must read this and see what all the hype was about and I am very glad I did.
Hugely enjoyable book, hugely rich in its tapestry of stories of the characters lives, how the lives are intermingled, the violence that abounds still to this day but maybe not quite in the form of the 12th century, and the building of Kingsbridge cathedral, the first Gothic cathedral in England. I have always enjoyed historical novels and this one fit the bill for me.
So, if you haven’t yet read this book for the same reasons I hadn’t, put aside your doubts and just read it for what it is. A really great story.
(and now, time to get my hands on the second book… World without end.)