Synopsis: We are in England in the 1660s. Charles II has been restored to the throne following years of civil war and Oliver 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.
This book took me 13 years to finish.
Well, sort of. Back in 1998 when I bought it, I got about 2/3 of the way through before giving up. I don’t remember what the reason was exactly. It might have been my expectations – I framed this story as a mystery in my head (I think this is how it was marketed) and wasn’t prepared for the amount of atmospheric (non-mystery-solving) detail it has. Yes the reason that each person writes his part of the narrative is because someone is killed, but none of them is directly involved in trying to find out who and why. That’s probably what did it. That and the amount of political intrigue concerning the toppling of Cromwell’s Republic and the Restoration of the Monarchy. I didn’t know much about that and so trying to piece it all together was too much and a lot of the implications whizzed right by me.
This time around I had access to a robust internet and so could do some reading beforehand. It certainly helped. Also I readjusted my expectations of this book and read it more as a historical fiction piece rather than as a mystery. Having the murder take a back seat to each narrator’s own doings certainly made things easier. Now I’ve read it I’m glad I hung onto it even though I couldn’t get through it the first time. I do that with books that seem to have potential.
I certainly can see why I stopped where I did; Wallis is a repugnant person with a vicious little mind and a judgmental attitude. Bigoted Asshole about sums him up. I don’t know if that’s what he was actually like, but he made my flesh crawl and I had to force myself read his piece of the story. There is so much interconnected detail that I didn’t allow myself to skim for fear of missing something important and becoming lost later on. Of all four narrators, Wallis is the least sympathetic with Prescott coming in a close second. Cola was smarmy and always seemed to be trying to ingratiate himself into something and wasn’t so attractive either, but neither was he repulsive. Through the accounts from the others we learn that he is not what he seems, nor is he exactly what others think either. I love that kind of thing. Unreliable narrators don’t scare me off; I rather enjoy their twisted views. Our final narrator was a bit deluded, but likeable enough. Wood had to balance a precarious social position with his conscience and in any age, that’s difficult to do.
Mild spoilers -
No, none of the narrators had much sympathy from me. All of that was reserved for Sarah Blundy. Every time I read a novel set in a time where individuals could be trampled on, violated and taken advantage of with impunity I am even more thankful I’m a child of the later 20th century. In the end, I didn’t like what she became though; I could have done without the Christ-figure, thanks. Wasn’t her fate awful enough without that? But I guess once Pears got going with the religious aspect of the story he couldn’t resist going a few steps beyond. Maybe it’s the atheist in me, but I found the whole thing ridiculous. As Wood got through his tale and it started meshing with Prescott and Wallis’s I knew the ultimate solution would be something religious. It didn’t matter much to me though. I can’t work up a froth about the distinctions that made everyone so rabid back then. Catholic, Protestant, whatever, it’s all basically the same superstitious wankery to me and so even in the end, when intellectually I knew why everyone was freaking out, emotionally it had little effect. (And before anyone gets on me about it, yes I know the basic differences between C & P dogma – the Pope as God’s rep on earth, the transubstantiation etc, but I don’t care about them…they are stupid to me, but then again, all religion is). Ok, I’m letting it go.
As an inside look at the life and times though, I think it’s excellent. I loved how a man who insisted on quarterly baths is called fastidious. Descriptions of food, living conditions, clothing and most of all the “medical advances” of the day all made me cringe. Although in 400 years people of the future will probably cringe at our primitive surgical remedies and clumsy drug regimens that do not cure, but only mask symptoms. Still, to die like Anne Blundy did is intensely horrific. And I know that knowledge and enquiry had to start somewhere, but to not know what blood is and what it’s for is inconceivable. Ditto for needles, injections and transfusions. It’s hard to put oneself back into that darkly ignorant time. Same with political equality and jurisprudence. It all has to start somewhere, but it’s difficult to read about it with any serenity.
So approach this book as one about memory and the presentation of events; how they differ and how through omission and misdirection a narrator can manipulate the reader. Approach it with the understanding that there is no sleuth, no who-dunnit, no detection, but that the mystery will be revealed in pieces by each narrator and it will be up to you to frame the solution. Read it with curiosity about how English people struggled with being subjects and being citizens and the differences between the two. And of course, read it with the idea that religion ruled all and is the most powerful control mechanism ever devised.
What the title means - it comes from a work of philosophy by Francis Bacon published in 1620.
The whole quote goes like this - "Among Prerogative Instances I will put in the fourteenth place Instances of the Fingerpost, borrowing the term from the fingerposts which are set up where roads part, to indicate the several directions. These I also call Decisive and Judicial, and in some cases, Oracular and Commanding Instances. I explain them thus. When in the investigation of any nature the understanding is so balanced as to be uncertain to which of two or more natures the cause of the nature in question should be assigned on account of the frequent and ordinary concurrence of many natures, instances of the fingerpost show the union of one of the natures with the nature in question to be sure and indissoluble, of the other to be varied and separable; and thus the question is decided, and the former nature is admitted as the cause, while the latter is dismissed and rejected. Such instances afford very great light and are of high authority, the course of interpretation sometimes ending in them and being completed. Sometimes these instances of the fingerpost meet us accidentally among those already noticed, but for the most part they are new, and are expressly and designedly sought for and applied, and discovered only by earnest and active diligence."
In Latin a fingerpost is simply a cross, think roadsign. Basically when two sets of evidence or indications conflict, one will eventually become so prominent and undeniable that it will point to the truth directly and there is no more argument. Also that sometimes a fingerpost will be unnoticed among other things we think are more important, but when seen in a new light or under new circumstances, they stand out. It's that second part of Bacon's definition that really refers to the book and its structure.
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