World Without End - Ken Follett

"Does it need to be this thick?" The question a friend asked me about this book. It's the second about medieval Kingsbridge by this author, and I sort of think it does need to have this length in order to create a world that we don't really share or have experienced. It describes a complex society and places over a 30 year timespan, during which time people come and go, the protagonists are successful, fail, and can become successful again. There are evocative descriptions of the plague and its impact on society - so much worse than bird flu, and mixed in with religious concerns about its impact and those it struck down. Above all its a book about human nature and the resilience that so many people have to adversity. There's a lot in the book about unfairness, and the arbitrariness of life. A bridge collapses - some people live, some die.
I read the previous book in the set, Pillars of the Earth when in Ghana, where I'd been staying in a village on the coast. There is a clarity about society's structure that is apparent there, and which used to be apparent in English villages too - people knew how the hierarchy of society worked. That is true in Ghana now - there are village Chief's and the Queen Mother (not related). These two people represent a structure and can intervene in disputes and so on. We don't have that same perspective any more - and for very good reasons, but it does create some visible understood framework in which the Ghanaian village operates and of which our youth of today have no experience.
So I've enjoyed both books, and their evocation of a past time through which I've enjoyed contemplating and thinking about our social mores now.