Ending Well

Must say, I thought Ken Follett's narrative power was somewhat deserting him as I moved into the final stretch of World Without End. After the red hot central segment of the novel with the wars in France and the Black Death reaching Kingsbridge, the stuff about the children of Merthin & Caris & Gwenda & Ralph & Wulfric & Philippa etc etc began to seem a bit tepid and more than a bit soap-opera-ish. It didn't help that I was wondering whether we were going to get something of the magic of the ending of Pillars when everything brilliantly connects to mainstream history and the murder in the cathedral and, I suppose, the gunpowder plot ending to A Column of Fire, though I don't think that was quite as hypnotically convincing as the ending of the first of the Kingsbridge trilogy.

But I was wrong. Despite the lack of historical fireworks the subdued ending of World Without End proved highly satisfying in its final chapters. Continuing the story into a second generation made sense once the idea of the legacy left by those characters we come to admire worked itself out. Most of all it was Gwenda's story that worked for me. In a sense she achieves little other than simple survival, giving herself and her husband and children a life in the most difficult of circumstances. But it's her resilience and tough-mindedness that, in some ways, give the novel its essential character. And her bloody killing of Ralph had me cheering.

I think Follett is consciously celebrating a certain kind of Englishness in these novels and I'm happy to join in, especially since it's distinctly dark and contrary in its nature.