Nicholas Lezard
AN INSTANCE OF THE FINGERPOST by Iain Pears (Vintage)
There is something about fat historical thrillers – in particular, those with pretensions – that can be uniquely dispiriting. They’re a kind of intellectual pornography, titillating us into an unwarranted sense of fulfilment. The more ambitious ones – like Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, or Lawrence Norfolk’s Lemprire’s Dictionary – exploit the blanks in our knowledge of history with the most outlandish inventions, allowing us to think that these works of fiction uncover centuries-old secrets which would have changed the course of history had they … In The Name of the Rose, it’s a lost work by Aristotle. In Lemprire’s Dictionary, it’s … oh, I can’t remember.
An Instance of the Fingerpost is a superior example of the genre, not least because its denouement is so audacious, not to say moving, that you have to take your hat off to it in the end.
In 1663, a Venetian, Marco da Cola, visits England to sort out some family business, setting in train an extraordinary narrative. Four narratives, in fact; for Da Cola’s story only takes up the first quarter of the book, and the baton is passed to three others, whose accounts both contradict and complement each other.
As the form dictates, the novel seethes with atmosphere. The language is just fancy enough to let us imagine we’re in the 17th century, without being intimidatingly flowery. It bring alive not only the history of the times – the faction-ridden politics of Restoration England – but some of the people who were players in it. If you’re dithering at the airport bookstalls, you could do much worse than pick this.