List Books Concering An Instance of the Fingerpost

Original Title:	An Instance of the Fingerpost
ISBN:	1573227951 (ISBN13: 9781573227957)
Edition Language:	English
Setting:	Oxford, England,1663(United Kingdom)
Literary Awards:	Martin Beck Award (1999)

An Instance of the Fingerpost Paperback | Pages: 691 pages

Describe Appertaining To Books An Instance of the Fingerpost

Title	:	An Instance of the Fingerpost
Author	:	Iain Pears
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	First Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 691 pages
Published	:	April 1st 2000 by Riverhead Books (first published 1997)
Categories	:	Historical. Historical Fiction. Fiction. Mystery. Crime

Description Conducive To Books An Instance of the Fingerpost

An ingenious tour de force: an utterly compelling historical mystery with a plot that twists and turns and keeps the reader guessing until the very last page. We are in England in the 1660s. Charles II has been restored to the throne following years of civil war and 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. With rights sold for record-breaking sums around the world, An Instance of the Fingerpost is destined to become a major international publishing event. Deserving of comparison to the works of John Fowles and Umberto Eco, Iain Pears's novel is an ingenious tour de force: an utterly compelling historical mystery with a plot that twists and turns and keeps the reader guessing until the very last page.

Rating Appertaining To Books An Instance of the Fingerpost

Ratings: 3.94 From 20880 Users | 1256 Reviews

Rate Appertaining To Books An Instance of the Fingerpost

What sticks in my mind about this book is being consumed with fury for 1/4th of it--and then having the following conclusion be the greatest revenge. A really excellent novel with some very unreliable narrators and detailed characterization. I was amazed at how everything fit together by the end.

The conceit of this book -- 4 different narrators each telling his version of the same set of events -- was novel and well-executed, and the rendering of Restoration England was obviously well-researched. However, the story dragged at times as a result of the detailed explorations of 17th-century politics and mannerisms. I would recommend this only to a those with a serious interest in historical fiction.

This is a good book, don't let the measly three stars tell you any differently. The author juggles the contrasting views of the unreliable narrators with veritable finesse, so the solution to the mystery isn't revealed till the very last pages. However, I do not like unreliable narrators, especially those that largely treat anyone that isn't an affluent man with outright disrespect. So, this was very well-written; I just spent too much time being pissed at the narrators to be bothered to give a

An interesting concept, meticulously executed...but it didn't work well for me. The book is split between four narrators, each describing essentially the same set of events from his own perspective. The storyline is relatively interesting, particularly towards the end. But I didn't find any of the four narrators to be particularly compelling and the story ended up feeling slow and disjointed. Also, perhaps due to the book's structure, the revelation felt anticlimactic when it finally arrived.

735 pages, and it wasn't even worth one star.For the first hundred pages, the book was so dull that I trudged along, hoping it would get better. It didn't, and by then I was trapped. After that, it stopped being boring and became shockingly offensive instead. The writer killed off the only charismatic character in the book, and showcased the most villainous. In the final segment, a decent character came back into play, and things started looking up until, that is, the author decided to cheer

I loved, loved, loved this book.

This is one of the few books that I felt compelled to start immediately again, from page one, after reaching the end -- even though it has close to 700 pages.The story of this thriller is retold, in succession, by four different people. One of them lies and not until the very end does the reader know who is falsifying the story. And that is why I wanted to read it again: to pay attention to the structure and to how the story is woven by different points of view, and see where the liar has