A Column of Fire

I went into A Column of Fire already knowing that I enjoy Ken Follett's writing, but within the first few pages I realised I had misunderstood something about his style. I had always said that Follett writes with a great deal of detail. That isn't quite it.

Ken Follett doesn't rush.

He allows people to walk into rooms, notice their surroundings, have conversations and simply live before history comes crashing through the door. After recently reading Rosamunde Pilcher, I recognised the technique immediately. They are very different writers, but both understand something important: sometimes the moments between the important events are what make those events matter.

A Column of Fire begins in 1558, in a Europe divided by religion. Protestants and Catholics don't merely disagree with one another; depending upon where they live and who sits upon the throne, believing the wrong thing can cost them their freedom, their property—or their lives.

At first I was appalled by the persecution of Protestants. Then the political wheel turned and suddenly Catholics were being persecuted.

That was when the novel became something more than historical fiction for me.

It stopped being about Catholic versus Protestant and became a story about what happens when human beings become convinced that their beliefs give them the right to control the conscience of another person.

Follett repeatedly made me uncomfortable with that question. I watched Scripture being used to justify abuse. I watched governments dictate how people should worship. People were fined for not attending church – can you imagine that! Let’s be honest – how many of us would be fined in this day and age?

Priests were hunted. Protestants were murdered. Catholics were imprisoned. And each side could convince itself that what it was doing was necessary because its side possessed the truth.

Then came Paris and St. Bartholomew's Day

I didn't know about the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre before reading this book, and that section genuinely disturbed me.

Beginning in Paris in August 1572, the massacre of French Huguenots spread beyond the city and ultimately cost thousands of lives. Reading it through Follett's characters was very different from encountering a paragraph about it in a history book.

What appalled me most wasn't simply the killing. It was watching people being led into killing. Neighbours became enemies. Fear became justification. Religious identity became sufficient reason to strip another human being of ordinary compassion.

And I found myself wondering:

How does an ordinary person reach the point where he becomes willing to murder someone who yesterday was simply his neighbour? That question stayed with me.

Centuries have passed since 1572. We have vastly greater access to education and information. We understand psychology, propaganda and group behaviour far better than people of the sixteenth century did. And yet human beings can still be persuaded to fear "the other."

That massacre deserves its own research—and its own piece of writing….someday I might tackle that.

Follett's greatest trick

One of my favourite things about the novel was watching fictional characters walk naturally beside real historical figures.

Elizabeth I.
Mary, Queen of Scots.
Francis Drake.
Philip II of Spain.
The Duke of Guise.
Guy Fawkes.

Follett doesn't need his fictional characters to change history. He simply places them in the gaps where they could have existed. That taught me something important about historical fiction. You don't have to rewrite history to make it yours. You can create someone who might have been standing quietly in the room.

And Follett's transitions are superb. Scenes flow into one another so naturally that decades disappear almost unnoticed. Then suddenly a character dies and you realise just how much time has passed. We didn't merely watch Elizabeth I become queen. We grew old with her. When she died in 1603, it felt like the end of an era because we had entered the story with her in 1558.

The people I met along the way

Ned Willard became particularly interesting to me because his principles were eventually tested by the very government he served. He wanted tolerance and he opposed the persecution of Protestants—but then found himself serving a Protestant state that persecuted Catholics.

His growing discomfort with his work was one of the strongest parts of the novel because Follett refused to give him an easy moral answer.

Then there was Sylvie. Brave, resourceful, determined Sylvie. Her death hurt. At this point I was quite ready to jump into this novel and assist. I was dragged along by Follett’s writing.

And finally we come to the two gentlemen who occupied a rather special place in my reading notes.

Rollo Fitzgerald, also known as Jean Langlais.

Traitor. Fanatic. Freaking tomcat. He lost all rights to my Rolos long before Follett finally hanged him.

And then...

Pierre Aumande

Where does one even begin? Pierre progressed steadily through my personal classification system:

I don't like Pierre.

Then:

Pierre the ass.

Then:

Pierre Whats-His-Face.

Then:

Ass Personified.

Then:

Complete and Utter Bastard.

Eventually vocabulary failed altogether and he became simply:

Pierre the F@#$%. Yes, you guessed it!

He lied, manipulated, terrorised, and eventually, murdered his wife Odette, exploited religion and political power, helped manufacture violence and took pleasure in making other people afraid.

And then Louise, Marchioness de Nîmes—the woman he had terrorised and beaten—concealed a dagger while appearing to pray.

Boom. Pierre was dead. My satisfaction: considerable. I am convinced I did a little jig!

Vocabulary acquired against my will

Ken Follett also apparently decided that reading approximately 900 pages of religious warfare, political intrigue and murder wasn't sufficiently taxing.

There would be vocabulary examinations.

Irascibly — irritably or angrily.
Vituperative — bitterly abusive.
Pusillanimous — cowardly; lacking courage.
Parsimonious — excessively stingy.
Oleaginously — ingratiatingly, unpleasantly smooth or oily.
Insouciance — carefree unconcern.
Sybarite — someone devoted to luxury and pleasure.

At various points I became convinced Follett was sitting beside a thesaurus thinking: "The reader appears comfortable. We can't have that."

Follett had me looking for my dictionary more than once.

What I take away from it

A Column of Fire reminded me why historical fiction can be such a powerful doorway into history.

I picked up a novel, but I came away wanting to research religious persecution, the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, Elizabethan espionage, the Jesuits, the Spanish Armada, the Babington Plot and the Gunpowder Plot.

But more importantly, it made me think about people. How easily conviction becomes certainty. How easily certainty becomes intolerance. How easily intolerance becomes permission.

And how frighteningly easy it can become to stop seeing another human being as your neighbour. That is what will stay with me.

Ken Follett remains one of my favourite authors. But this book also taught me something about the kind of writer I want to become.

Don't rush.

Let characters live.

Let history happen around them.

Give readers enough time with people that when history finally crashes through their front door, it matters. And perhaps that is the greatest compliment I can give A Column of Fire:

I didn't feel as though I had read about fifty years of history.

I felt as though I had lived through them.