The Pillars of the Earth

I was disappointed. Characters were either good guys or bad guys (or, in the case of women, all good, strong, highly competent, independent–fighting off rapists while becoming successful businesswomen). Hints of a mystery pop up here and there, then fade away for another 150 pages, until the mystery is solved anticlimactically near the end of the book. No attempt is made to give the characters the sensibilities of their own time–Philip, as the prior of the monastery, probably comes the closest, simply because being the prior of a monastery is a rather medieval thing to be. And at 900 pages, the book is flabby. A lot happens in that 900 pages, but not all of it is interesting or significant. I was expecting something gorgeous, like Edith Pargeter's The Heaven Tree (which some web sites recommend to people who liked Pillars of the Earth), a story about moral conflict and being true to oneself. Instead, I thought this book was more like a novel you'd buy at the supermarket.