Mondo Bungle

An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears, 1997

Arcadia had already shown me what a force Iain Pears is as a writer, and this here just enhances that knowledge. It's a fairly different animal thematically but the deft and utterly engaging prose is still present and perfect. It's a historical mystery about a murder, and it's told through four separate narrators whose accounts of the same event all vary in credibility and perspective, obviously. While that is the core of the novel's conflict, it reaches out incredibly far to cover much ground of a political nature, and relates it all quite impressively.

For its expansiveness nothing is without purpose to the dilemma at large. Occasionally it may not seem so, but you know how books are, and we reach a point deep into it where it all becomes so clear and the greatly intricate weaving of plot lines is genuinely flooring. The man has an uncanny ability with the pen.

5/5

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