Pure

By Andrew Miller

The clearing of a cemetery stokes the fires of revolution in eighteenth-century France in this Costa Prize–winning “novel of ideas disguised as a ghost story” (The New York Times).
 
Paris, 1785. An ambitious young engineer, Jean-Baptiste Baratte arrives in Paris charged with emptying the overflowing cemetery of Les Innocents, an ancient site whose stench is poisoning the neighborhood’s air and water. A self-styled modern man of reason, Baratte sees his work as a chance to clear away the burden of history. But he soon suspects that the destruction of the cemetery might be a prelude to his own fate—and the demise of the social order.
 
As unrest against the court of Louis XVI mounts, the engineer realizes that the future he had planned may no longer be the one he wants. His assignment sets him on a path of discovery and desire, as well as relentless labor, assault, and sudden death.
 
“Pure is a compelling, timely novel—with its throb of revolution, of ordinary people arising in anger—a narrative that takes death as its subject yet races with life.” —The Guardian

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9781609458768

Andrew Miller

ANDREW MILLER is an operations expert whose clients include the Bank of Nova Scotia, McKesson Canada, 3M Canada, Mount Sinai Hospital, and other world-class institutions. Before starting his firm in 2006, he held senior consulting positions with IBM Business Consulting Services and PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting.

Book preview

FIRST

The time will come when the sun will shine

only on free men who have no master but their reason.

—MARQUIS DE CONDORCET

1

A young man, young but not very young, sits in an anteroom somewhere, some wing or other, in the Palace of Versailles. He is waiting. He has been waiting a long time.

There is no fire in the room, though it is the third week in October and cold as Candlemas. His legs and back are stiffening from it–the cold and three days of travelling through it, first with Cousin André from Bellême to Nogent, then the coach, overfull with raw-faced people in winter coats, baskets on their laps, parcels under their feet, some travelling with dogs, one old man with a cockerel under his coat. Thirty hours to Paris and the rue aux Ours, where they climbed down onto cobbles and horseshit, and shifted about outside the haulier’s office as if unsure of their legs. Then this morning, coming from the lodgings he had taken on the rue–the rue what?–an early start on a hired nag to reach Versailles and this, a day that may be the most important of his life, or may be nothing.

He is not alone in the room. A man of about forty is sitting opposite him in a narrow armchair, his surtout buttoned to his chin, his eyes shut, his hands crossed in his lap, a large and rather antique-looking ring on one finger. Now and then he sighs, but is otherwise perfectly silent.

Behind this sleeper, and to either side of him, there are mirrors rising from the parquet to the cobwebbed mouldings of the ceiling. The palace is full of mirrors. Living here, it must be impossible not to meet yourself a hundred times a day, every corridor a source of vanity and doubt. The mirrors ahead of him, their surfaces hazed with dust (some idle finger has sketched a man’s bulbous cock and next to it a flower that may be a rose), give out a greenish light as if the whole building were sunk, drowned. And there, part of the wreck, his own brown-garbed form, his face in the mottled glass insufficiently carried to be descriptive or particular. A pale oval on a folded body, a body in a brown suit, the suit a gift from his father, its cloth cut by Gontaut, who people like to say is the best tailor in Bellême but who, in truth, is the only tailor, Bellême being the sort of place where a good suit is passed down among a man’s valuables along with the brass bed-warmer, the plough and harrow, the riding tack. It’s a little tight across his shoulders, a little full in the skirts, a little heavy at the cuffs, but all of it honestly done and after its fashion perfectly correct.

He presses his thighs, presses the bones of his knees, then reaches down to rub something off the ankle of his left stocking. He has been careful to keep them as clean as possible, but leaving in the dark, moving through streets he did not know, no lamps burning at such an hour, who can say what he might have stepped in? He scrapes at it with the edge of his thumb. Mud? Hopefully. He does not sniff his thumb to enquire.

A small dog makes its entrance. Its claws skitter on the floor. It looks at him, briefly, through large occluded eyes, then goes to the vase, the tall, gilded amphora displayed or abandoned in one of the room’s mirrored angles. It sniffs, cocks its leg. A voice—elderly, female—coos to it from the corridor. A shadow passes the open door; the sound of silk hems brushing over the floor is like the onset of rain. The dog bustles after her, its water snaking from the vase towards the crossed heels of the sleeping man. The younger man watches it, the way it navigates across the uneven surface of the parquet, the way even a dog’s piss is subject to unalterable physical laws . . .

He is still watching it (on this day that may be the most important of his life, or nothing at all) when the door of the minister’s office opens with a snap like the breaking of those seals they put on the doors of infected houses. A figure, a servant or secretary, angular, yellow-eyed, signals to him with a slight raising of his chin. He gets to his feet. The older man has opened his eyes. They have not spoken, do not know each other’s names, have merely shared three cold hours of an October morning. The older man smiles. It is the most resigned, most elegant expression in the world; a smile that appears like the flower of vast, profitless learning. The younger man nods to him, then slips, quickly, through the half-open door of the office for fear it might shut on him again, suddenly and for ever.

2

St. Augustine,’ says the minister, holding between two fingers a part-devoured macaroon, ‘informs us that the honours due to the dead were intended, principally, to console the living. Only prayer was effective. Where the corpse was buried was irrelevant.’ He returns to the macaroon, dips it in a glass of white wine, sucks at it. Some crumbs fall onto the papers piled on his immense desk. The servant, standing behind his master’s chair, looks at the crumbs with a kind of professional sorrow but makes no attempt to remove them.

‘He was an African,’ says the minister. ‘St. Augustine. He must have seen lions, elephants. Have you seen an elephant?’

‘No, my lord.’

‘There is one here. Somewhere. A great, melancholy beast that lives on Burgundy wine. A gift from the king of Siam. When it arrived in the time of His Majesty’s grandfather, every dog in the palace hid for a month. Then they grew used to it, began to bark at it, to bait it. Had it not been hidden away, perhaps they would have killed it. Fifty of them might have managed.’ He glances across the desk at the young man, pauses a moment as though the elephant and the dogs might also be figures in a parable. ‘Where was I?’ he asks.

‘St. Augustine?’ says the young man.

The minister nods. ‘It was the medieval Church that began the practice of burying inside churches, in order, of course, to be near the relics of the saints. When a church was full, they buried them in the ground about. Honorius of Autun calls the cemetery a holy dormitory, the bosom of the Church, the ecclesiae gremium. At what point do you think they started to outnumber us?’

‘Who, my lord?’

‘The dead.’

‘I don’t know, my lord.’

‘Early, I think. Early.’ The minister finishes his macaroon. The servant passes him a cloth. The minister wipes his fingers, puts on a pair of round-rimmed spectacles and reads the sheet of manuscript on the top of the pile in front of him. The room is warmer than the anteroom, but only by a very little. A small fire crackles and occasionally leans a feather of smoke into the room. Other than the desk there is not much in the way of furniture. A small portrait of the king. Another painting that seems to depict the last moments of a boar hunt. A table with a decanter and glasses on it. A heavy porcelain chamber pot by the fireplace. An umbrella of oiled silk propped under the window. Through the window itself, nothing but the ruffled grey belly of the sky.

‘Lestingois,’ says the minister, reading from the paper. ‘You are Jean-Marie Lestingois.’

‘No, my lord.’

‘No?’ The minister looks back at the pile, draws out a second sheet of paper. ‘Baratte, then. Jean-Baptiste Baratte?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘An old family?’

‘My father’s family have been in the town, in Bellême, for several generations.’

‘And your father is a glover.’

‘A master glover, my lord. And we have some land. A little over four hectares.’

‘Four?’ The minister allows himself a smile. Some powder from his wig has whitened the silk on his shoulders. His face, thinks Jean-Baptiste, if it were continued outwards a little, would come to an edge, like the blade of an axe. ‘The Comte de S— says you are hard-working, diligent, of clean habits. Also that your mother is a Protestant.’

‘Just my mother, my lord. My father . . .’

The minister waves him to silence. ‘How your parents say their prayers is of no interest. You are not being considered for the post of royal chaplain.’ He looks down at the paper again. ‘Schooled by the brothers of the Oratorian Order in Nogent, after which, thanks to the generosity of the comte, you were able to enter the Ecole Royale des Ponts et Chaussées.’

‘In time, my lord, yes. I had the honour of being instructed there by Maître Perronet.’

‘Who?’

‘The great Perronet, my lord.’

‘You know geometry, algebra. Hydraulics. It says here that you have built a bridge.’

‘A small bridge, my lord, on the comte’s estate.’

‘A decoration?’

‘There was . . . It had some aspect of that, my lord.’

‘And you possess some experience of mining?’

‘I was for almost two years at the mines by Valenciennes. The comte has an interest in the mines.’

‘He has many interests, Baratte. One does not dress one’s wife in diamonds without having interests.’ The minister has perhaps made a joke and something witty though respectful should be said in return, but Jean-Baptiste is not thinking of the comte’s wife and her jewels, nor of his mistress and her jewels, but of the miners at Valenciennes. A special kind of poverty, unrelieved, under those palls of smoke, by any grace of nature.

‘You yourself are one of his interests, are you not?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Your father made gloves for the comte?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘I might have him make some for me.’

‘My father is dead, my lord.’

‘Oh?’

‘Some years past.’

‘Dead of what?’

‘An affliction, my lord. A slow affliction.’

‘Then no doubt you wish to honour his memory.’

‘I do, my lord.’

‘You are ready to serve?’

‘I am.’

‘I have something for you, Baratte. An enterprise that handled with the necessary flair, the necessary discretion, will ensure this progress of yours does not falter. It will give you a name.’

‘I am grateful for your lordship’s trust.’

‘Let us not speak of trust just yet. You are familiar with the cemetery of les Innocents?’

‘A cemetery?’

‘By the market of les Halles.’

‘I have heard of it, my lord.’

‘It has been swallowing the corpses of Paris for longer than anyone can remember. Since the days of antiquity even, when the city barely extended beyond the islands. It must have been quite tolerable then. A patch of ground with little or nothing around it. But the city grew. The city embraced it. A church was built. Walls built around the burying ground. And around the walls, houses, shops, taverns. All of life. The cemetery became famous, celebrated, a place of pilgrimage. Mother Church made a fortune from burial fees. So much to go inside the church. A little less to go in the galleries outside. The pits of course were free. One cannot ask a man to pay to have his remains piled on top of others like a slice of bacon.

‘They tell me that during a single outbreak of the plague fifty thousand corpses were buried at les Innocents in less than a month. And so it continued, corpse upon corpse, the death-carts queuing along the rue Saint-Denis. There were even burials at night, by torchlight. Corpse upon corpse. A number beyond any computation. Vast legions packed into a smudge of earth no bigger than a potato field. Yet no one seemed troubled by it. There were no protests, no expressions of disgust. It may even have seemed normal. And then, perhaps it was a generation ago, we began to receive complaints. Some of those who lived beside the cemetery had started to find the proximity an unpleasant one. Food would not keep. Candles were extinguished as if by the pinch of unseen fingers. People descending their stairs in the morning fell into a swoon. And there were moral disturbances, particularly among the young. Young men and women of hitherto blemishless existences . . .

‘A commission was established to investigate the matter. A great many expert gentlemen wrote a great many words on the subject. Recommendations were made, plans drawn for new, hygienic cemeteries that would once again be outside the city limits. But recommendations were ignored; plans were rolled and put away. The dead continued to arrive at the doors of les Innocents. Somehow room was found for them. And so it would have continued, Baratte. We need not doubt it. Continued until the Last Trump, had it not been for a spring of unusually heavy rainfall, five years past now. A subterranean wall separating the cemetery from the cellar of a house on one of the streets overlooking it collapsed. Into the cellar tumbled the contents of a common pit. You may, perhaps, imagine the disquiet felt by those who lived above that cellar, by their neighbours, their neighbours’ neighbours, by all those who, on going to their beds at night, must lie down with the thought of the cemetery pressing like the esurient sea against the walls of their homes. It could no longer hold on to its dead. One might bury one’s father there and not in a month’s time know where he was. The king himself was disturbed. The order was given for les Innocents to be shut. Church and cemetery. Shut without delay, the doors locked. And so, despite the petitioning of His Grace the Bishop, it has remained ever since. Shut, empty, silent. What is your opinion?’

‘Of what, my lord?’

‘Could such a place simply be left?’

‘It is hard to say, my lord. Perhaps not.’

‘It stinks.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Some days I believe I can smell it from here.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘It is poisoning the city. Left long enough, it may poison not just local shopkeepers but the king himself. The king and his ministers.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘It is to be removed.’

‘Removed?’

‘Destroyed. Church and cemetery. The place is to be made sweet again. Use fire, use brimstone. Use whatever you need to get rid of it.’

‘And the . . . the occupants, my lord?’

‘What occupants?’

‘The dead?’

‘Disposed of. Every last knucklebone. It will require a man unafraid of a little unpleasantness. Someone not intimidated by the barking of priests. Not given to superstitions.’

‘Superstitions, my lord?’

‘You cannot imagine a place like les Innocents does not have its legends? It is even claimed there is a creature in the charnels, something sired by a wolf in those days—nights we should say—when wolves still came into the city in winter. Would you be scared of such a creature, Baratte?’

‘Only if I believed in it, my lord.’

‘You are a sceptic, no doubt. A disciple of Voltaire. I understand he particularly appeals to young men of your class.’

‘I am . . . I have heard, of course . . .’

‘Yes, of course. And he is read here too. More widely than you might guess. When it comes to wit, we are perfect democrats. And a man who had as much money as Voltaire cannot have been entirely bad.’

‘No, my lord.’

‘So you do not jump at shadows?’

‘No, my lord.’

‘The work will be both delicate and gross. You will have the authority of this office. You will have money. You will report to me through my agent, Monsieur Lafosse.’ The minister glances over Jean-Baptiste’s shoulder. Jean-Baptiste turns. On a stool behind the door a man is sitting. There is time only to notice the long, white fingers, the long limbs dressed in black. The eyes also, of course. Two black nails hammered into a skull.

‘You will tell Lafosse everything. He has offices in Paris. He will visit you at your work.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘And you will keep the nature of your business to yourself for as long as is practicably possible. The people’s affections are unpredictable. They may hold dear even a place like les Innocents.’

‘My lord, when am I to begin this work?’

But the minister is suddenly deaf. The minister has lost interest in him. He is turning over papers and reaching for his little glass, which the servant, moving around the desk, guides into his outstretched fingers.

Lafosse rises from his stool. From the depths of his coat, he takes a sheet of folded and sealed paper, then a purse. He gives both to Jean-Baptiste. Jean-Baptiste bows to him, bows more deeply to the minister, steps backwards towards the door, turns and exits. The man who was waiting with him has gone. Was he an engineer too? That Jean-Marie Lestingois the minister mentioned? And if the yellow-eyed servant had looked at him first, would he be the one now charged with the destruction of a cemetery?

He gathers up his riding coat from where he left it draped across the chair. On the floor, the dog’s urine, having exhausted its momentum, is slowly seeping into the wood.

3

For a corridor or two, a wing, he is sure he is retracing his steps. He passes windows big enough to ride a horse through, even, perhaps, an elephant. He descends flights of curving steps past enormous allegorical tapestries that shiver in the autumn draughts and must have exhausted the sight of scores of women, every detail detailed, stitch-perfect, the flowers at the foot of Parnassus, French country flowers—poppies, cornflowers, larkspur, chamomile . . .

The palace is a game, but he is growing tired of playing it. Some corridors are dark as evening; others are lit by branches of dripping candles. In these he finds jostling knots of servants, though when he asks for directions they ignore him or point in four different directions. One calls after him, ‘Follow your nose!’ but his nose tells him only that the dung of the mighty is much like the dung of the poor.

And everywhere, on every corridor, there are doors. Should he go through one? Is that how you escape the Palace of Versailles? Yet doors in such a place are as much subject to the laws of etiquette as everything else. Some you knock upon; others must be scratched with a fingernail. Cousin André explained this to him on the ride to Nogent, Cousin André the lawyer who, though three years younger, is already possessed of a sly worldliness, an enviable knowledge of things.

He stops in front of a door that seems to him somehow more promising than its neighbours. And can he not feel an eddy of cool air under its foot? He looks for scratch marks on the wood, sees none and gently knocks. No one answers. He turns the handle and goes in. There are two men sitting at a small, round table playing cards. They have large, blue eyes and silver coats. They tell him they are Polish, that they have been in the palace for months and hardly remember why they first came. ‘You know Madame de M—?’ asks one.

‘I am afraid not.’

They sigh; each turns over a card. At the back of the room, a pair of cats are testing their claws on the silk upholstery of a divan. Jean-Baptiste bows, excuses himself. But won’t he stay to play a while? Piquet passes the time as well as anything. He tells them he is trying to find his way out.

Out? They look at him and laugh.

In the corridor once more, he stops to watch a woman with heaped purple hair being carried horizontally through a doorway. Her head turns; her black eyes study him. She is not the sort of person you ask directions of. He descends to the floor below on a narrow stone screw of service stairs. Here, soldiers lounge on benches, while boys in blue uniforms drowse curled on tables, under tables, on window seats, anywhere there is space for them. Towards him come a dozen girls running half blind behind their bundles of dirty linen. To avoid being trampled, he steps (neither knocking nor scratching) through the nearest door and arrives in a space, a large, spreading room where little trees, perhaps a hundred of them, are stood in great terracotta pots. Though he is a northerner, a true northerner, he knows from his time waiting on the Comte de S— that these are lemon trees. They have been lagged with straw and sacking against the coming winter. The air is scented, softly green, the light slanting through rows of arched windows. One of these he forces open, and climbing onto a water-barrel, he jumps down into the outside world.

Behind him, in the palace, countless clocks sing the hour. He takes out his own watch. It is, like the suit, a gift, this one from Maître Perronet upon the occasion of his graduation. The lid is painted with the masonic all-seeing eye, though he is not a mason and does not know if Maître Perronet is one. As the hands touch the hour of two, the watch gently vibrates on his palm. He shuts its case, pockets it.

Ahead of him, a path of pale gravel leads between walls of clipped hedge too tall to see over. He follows the path; there is nothing else to guide him. He passes a fountain, its basin waterless and already full of autumn leaves. He is cold, suddenly tired. He pulls on his riding coat. The path divides. Which way now? Between the paths is a little arbour with a semicircular bench and above the bench a stone cupid mottled with lichens, his arrow aimed at whoever sits below him. Jean-Baptiste sits. He unseals the paper Lafosse gave to him. It contains the address of a house where he is to take up his lodging. He opens the mouth of the purse, pours some of the heavy coins into his hand. A hundred livres? Perhaps a little more. He is glad of it—relieved—for he has been living on his meagre savings for months, owes money to his mother, to Cousin André. At the same time he can see that the amount is not intended to flatter him. It feels closely calculated. The going rate for whatever he is now, a contractor, a state hireling, a destroyer of cemeteries . . .

A cemetery! Still he cannot quite take it in. A cemetery in the centre of Paris! A notorious boneyard! God knows, whatever it was he had expected on his journey here, whatever project he imagined might be offered to him—perhaps some work on the palace itself—this he had never dreamt of. Could he have refused it? The possibility had not occurred to him, had not, in all likelihood, existed. As to whether digging up bones was compatible with his status, his dignity as a graduate of the Ecole Royale des Ponts et Chaussées, he must try to find some way of thinking of it more . . . abstractly. He is, after all, a young man of ideas, of ideals. It cannot be impossible to conceive of this work as something worthy, serious. Something for the greater good. Something the authors of the Encyclopedie would approve of.

In front of the bench, a dozen sparrows have gathered, their feathers puffed against the cold. He watches them, their ragged hopping over the stones. In one of the pockets of his coat—a pocket deep enough to put all the sparrows inside—he has some bread from the breakfast he took in darkness, on horseback. He bites into it, chews, then pulls off a corner of the bread and crumbles it between thumb and finger. In their feeding, the little birds appear to dance between his feet.

4

On the rue de la Lingerie, her chair positioned at the right-hand side of the window in the drawing room on the first floor, Emilie Monnard—known to everyone as Ziguette—is gently sucking her lower lip and watching the day close over the rue Saint-Denis, the rue aux Fers, the market of les Halles. The market, of course, has long since been packed away, its edible litter carried off by those who live on it. What remains, that trash of soiled straw, fish guts, blood-dark feathers, the green trimmings of flowers brought up from the south, all this will blow away in the night or be scattered by brooms and flung water in tomorrow’s dawn. She has watched it all her life and has never wearied of it, the market and—more directly in her view—the old church of les Innocents with its cemetery, though in the cemetery nothing has happened for years, just the sexton and his granddaughter crossing to one of the gates, or more rarely, the old priest in his blue spectacles, who seems simply to have been forgotten about. How she misses it all. The shuffling processions winding from the church doors, the mourners tilted against each other’s shoulders, the tolling of the bell, the swaying coffins, then the muttering of the office and finally—the climax of it all—the moment the dead man or woman or child was lowered into the ground as though being fed to it. And when the others had left and the place was quiet again, she was still there, her face close to the window, keeping watch like a sister or an angel.

She sighs, looks back to the street, to the rue aux Fers, sees Madame Desproux, the baker’s wife, coming past the Italian fountain and pausing to talk to the widow Aries. And there, up by the market cross, is Merda the drunk. And that is Boubon the basket-maker, who lives alone behind his shop on the rue Saint-Denis . . . And there, coming from the end of the rue de la Fromagerie, is that woman in her red cloak. Did Merda just call something to her? It must relieve him to insult a creature lower even than himself, but the woman does not pause or turn. She is too used to the likes of Merda. How tall she is! And how absurdly straight she holds herself! Now someone, some man, is talking to her, though he keeps himself at a distance. Who is he? Surely not Armand (or should one say, it is all too likely to be Armand)? But now they part and each is soon lost to view. When darkness falls, some among those men who, in the light, tease her or insult her, will pursue her, make an arrangement, a rendezvous in a room somewhere. Is that how it works? And once they are in the room . . . Ah, she has imagined it, pictured it in great detail, has even, in the privacy and firelight of her bedroom, made herself blush furiously with such thoughts, sins of the mind she should confess to Père Poupart at Saint-Eustache, and perhaps would if Père Poupart did not look so like a scalded pig. Why are there no handsome priests

Reviews for Pure

[maryreinert · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great historical fiction with strange premise. Jean-Baptiste Baratte is a young engineer who finds himself employed to supervise the taking down of an old crumbling cathedral in Paris along with the cemetery next to it which is filled to over flow with dead bodies. It is the stink of too many dead that has finally caused the government to remove this site. Jean-Baptiste is a good man from a rural area who believes that reason should rule out superstition. Upon arrival in Paris, Jean-Baptiste meets the young organist who continues to play in the church although no one is there. Armand soon becomes a friend. Jean-Baptiste lives next to the church with a family, the Monnard's, whose strange daughter is very upset and unhappy about the removal of the church and the cemetery. The strange smells of the place have become so much a part of the lives of those that live nearby. There are a host of other characters in the book including a past friend of Jean-Baptiste who he recruits from the mines to help him in his assignment. There is the old sexton of the church who lives with his lovely daughter, Jeanne, who can smell nothing of the stench. The digging up of bodies sounds horrid, but the story is written with such skill, it is believable, and not impossible to imagine in the mind's eye.The task of destroying the church is finally finished but not in the way that he had expected. There is violence, friendship, fun, death, and horror intermingled in this well-written novel. Set in a time just before the French Revolution, I'm sure this can be parsed down as an allegory for French society at the time, but it is also just a good read.Only problem, is the ending which I would describe as weird - probably missed some point in there.

[roses7184_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is the third book I've read off of my "Genre Novels That Should Be Classics" reading list in a quest to expand my book choices beyond my normal comfort zone. I'm not a big historical fiction reader. Sometimes it makes appearances in my Fantasy or Science Fiction picks, but I never avidly seek it out. That's why I chose to listen to the audio of Pure. Jonathan Aris came highly recommended as a narrator, and I hoped he'd help me immerse myself in Paris circa 1785.

Jean-Baptiste Baratte was an intriguing character. A young man, an engineer, with visions of grand projects flitting across his mind. Imagine his surprise when the first job that he is tasked with, is the destruction of Les Innocents cemetary and its church. I was pulled in by this thought. If this is the only job offered, and you need the work, does it matter that you'll be destroying a piece of history? Unearthing the loved ones of others? Watching Jean-Baptiste struggle with this, following along as he fought his own inner demons, fascinated me.

What was tough for me, were the layers this book contains. Pure is packed to the brim with metaphor and symbolism. It may have been easier for me to soak that all in if I had been reading printed words. Perhaps. Despite Jonathan Aris' excellent narration, I still lost myself at certain points. Jean-Baptiste's thoughts would reach a point where they were so dense, so scattered, that I'd find myself struggling to pay attention. There were high points, and low points, but the ending threw me completely off. I listened to it again, just to make sure I didn't miss something important. I'm still confused.

For a very vividly written Paris backdrop, and a character that I enjoyed, I'll give this a two-star rating. The extra star is for Jonathan Aris' wonderful narration. If you have the opportunity to listen to this on audio, I'd say go for it! My quest continues on!

[cat3lib · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Imagery very good, an olfactory story, a bit like Perfume:The story of a Murder. An enjoyable read.

[infjsarah · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Dull, dull and dull. Why use 1 word when 24 will do? I just hated the style. An interesting historical episode but the book was like treacle. After page 30 I just skim read to the end in about 30 mins. Good idea, bad execution.

[alexandriaginni · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Better than a 3, not quite as good as a 4 in my book. I must admit that I could not put it down, though.

[joucy-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

End 18th century. A young engineer has to clean up an age-old church-yard in the middle of the capital.

[cassandra2020 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was voted Costa Novel of 2011 and was chosen by the Glasgow book group as our next read.

The blurb says:
"Deep in the heart of Paris its oldest cemetery is, by 1785, overflowing. Its stench hangs in the air, tainting the very breath of those who live nearby. The over-filled graves pop and burst, filling people’s basements with bones and spreading disease across the capital. But the cemetery’s roots are embedded deep in the hearts and minds of the people, for whom the graveyard has long provided a backdrop to their daily lives. Into their midst comes Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a young, provincial engineer charged by the king with demolishing it. At first Baratte sees this as a chance to clear the burden of history. But before long, he begins to suspect that the destruction of the cemetery might be a prelude to his own."

I loved the story of Jean-Baptiste. He arrives in Paris quite naive but with a sense of purpose. He sets about his task of clearing/cleansing Les Innocents but also finds himself distracted by the people, sights & sounds of Paris. The task takes its toll on him, but he also learns/grows from his experiences. As always, much more about the book would give too much away.

The descriptions of pre-revolutionary Paris and of the graveyard in particular are deeply evocative, I could almost feel my stomach heave as the author described the 'taint' to breath & food from the proximity to the graveyard. I loved all the characters that surrounded Jean-Baptiste and find myself wondering what happened to all these people during the revolution. Did they take part, did they survive, how were they impacted?

I think that's my only quibble: I would have liked a little more. Not just about the characters, but also about how the local people were affected by the graveyard's removal ie was life better or worse? Did the air clear? Was the taint removed or would that linger for the rest of their lives?

That's hardly a complaint tho, I loved the book, flew through it and would highly recommend it.

[oldblack-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

What was I thinking when I put this book on my wish list? I guess it was that I liked Miller's writing in "Oxygen" and wanted to try out more of his work. However, I invoked the Nancy Pearl rule and terminated my reading of this book. It was kind-of interesting, in an historical sort of way, but was just too much removed from my own experience to make it worth reading - at my advanced age, with not too many books worth of reading time left. If I were a 20 year old, it would probably be worth reading for "my own education". I'm beyond education now.

[edwinrelf_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Oh the smell! Paris in 1785 stank. Not only was the ancient graveyard of Les Innocents putrid because it was so full of corpses they couldn't decay, but the people didn’t bathe and hardly washed and then there were chamber pots under beds, in cupboards, behind screens and even in the corner of the box at the opera. In this sense the title of the book, Pure, is a oxymoron. Pooh’s and piss perfuming everywhere!That, of course, must be the author’s intent. There are two major aspects of this novel. On the one hand there is the powerful overriding metaphor that is the fact of the book. Secondly there is the sweet story of a young man with talent and aspiration who reconciles his notion of himself in his future with the reality of himself as a person as he goes through a major proving moment (a year) and settles to love with a woman and they with the companionship of friends.Through history any reader knows that the monumental French Revolution is only four years away. The Revolution is a cornerstone event in European civilisation and this civilisation’s dominance in the contemporary world. Bound with the names of locations and characters a meta table of symbols is laid out against which the saccharine (though stinky) story of the novel’s people plays out. Les Innocents alludes to Herod the king killing the innocent children. The central character Jean-Baptist Barrate is also John the Baptist and Barrate is a churn – a butter churn. Here is John the Baptist paving the way for the saviour (the Revolution?) turning over the foundation of the Catholic Church – which in France at the time was as corrupt as all get out. Lurking kindly in the story is Dr Guillotin studying life in the detritus of the corpses as they come from the ground. He is the historical character who as a Deputy in the first Assembly of the people after the revolution, and as a stern advocate against the death penalty, convinced the Deputies that if they were insistent on having a death penalty to do it as instantly as possible with Antoine Louis’s invention. (Severing the blood flow from the heart to the brain immediately reduces the cerebral profusion pressure and the neurones in the brain die instantly.) So, in Pure, we have this whacking huge metaphor as a backdrop to what is a sweet (innocent?) every day tale of a young man maturing. There is nothing outstanding in that story, lots of books have done that better. Andrew Millers writing is okay – good but not exceptional. Some of the vignettes with curious characters he drops into the story are witty. The importance of this book is the metaphor; the story, not so much.

[lauralkeet · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a young French engineer, arrives in 1785 Paris and receives the assignment to empty the Les Innocents cemetery, which is overflowing and having an ... erm ... environmental impact on the surrounding area. Baratte finds lodgings with a local family, the Monnards, and hires a team of laborers from a mine, with his friend Lecoeur as foreman. The cemetery also includes a church, no longer in use but with a staff that includes a priest, sexton and organist. As excavation begins the enormity of Baratte's task becomes evident. The cemetery is sub-divided and the crew tackles one large pit at a time. Remains must be moved, and the pit refilled. The laborers initially see their new jobs as a step up from working in a dangerous mine, but Baratte faces one challenge after another in motivating the laborers and providing for their basic needs. Baratte also must deal with a wide variety of emotions from the local residents. Some take great interest in the project and lend their talents to providing for the laborers. Others see the cemetery as an institution that should not be tampered with. As the story progresses, Baratte moves from idealistic and naive to someone more hardened, resigned, and at times even desperate. Baratte and the organist Armand strike up a friendship, and Armand helps him find his way with the locals. But Baratte's friendship with Lecoeur is tested as men who were once peers adjust to a new working relationship, and the stress of the project begins taking its toll. Three women play pivotal roles in the community and are just as interesting as those working on the excavation. Their stories enhance the dramatic tension and greatly enrich this novel.

[lkernagh · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Love the cover art of my copy but what a peculiar story. At times descriptive and flowing, and other times rather obtuse, vague and disjointed, I struggled as I tried to follow the author's logic - I am assuming there was some logic at work here - in piecing together this tale. My appreciation of the story - more the lack there of - could be chalked up to my impression that the story has a resigned Dickensian quality to it: The engineer's task is one that borders on the monumental, set in a time and place not wholly dissimilar to the dank, festering world of Dickens' grimy London. Dickens is very much a hit-or-miss author for me and sadly, this does not lend assistance in getting me to appreciate Miller's story. The whole story gave me the overall impression/feeling of ruin and crumbling decay - that was done rather well - but I found Miller's prose to be a bit stilted, almost as though it was a poor translation, even though it was written in the English language. Interesting story concept with a lot of potential but the delivery just fell flat for me. Part of me was hoping that this was the author's debut novel - it kind of had that 'debut' feel to it - but, no, this is novel number six so I am at a loss to explain my review and rating except to say that I am not Miller's target reading audience, even though the LT Will you like it? gave it a very high prediction confidence that I probably will like it. Always fun to click that after I finish a book!

[gaskella_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Initially I approached this book with some caution. The only other Andrew Miller novel I’d read many years before was Ingenious Pain, and although I could see that it was a great novel, I did find it hard going at the time. The premise of his latest though was so attractive, and by the second chapter I was hooked on this rather original historical novel.Pure is set in 1785, shortly before the French Revolution. Jean-Baptiste Baratte is a young Norman engineer, hired by the King’s offices to oversee the cleansing of an overfilled Parisian cemetery, that is poisoning the earth and air all around it. Nice job eh? Jean-Baptiste heads off into Paris, where lodgings have been set up with a local family overlooking the cemetery. He soon makes friends with Armand, the church organist, and finds that everything smells better after a brandy or two. He contacts his colleague from his last job at the mines at Valenciennes – Lecoeur will bring a team of miners to Paris to dig out the cemetery. Jeanne, the teenaged grand-daughter of the sexton will look after the men – indeed most of them grow to love her as their own daughter.All is set and the excavation is underway. Some doctors arrive, including one Dr Guillotin – yes! He is there to examine the bones, but his presence will prove necessary on many occasions over the following months – injury, illness, attempted murder, rape, suicide – everything will happen to those involved on this job. But it’s not all bad, for Jean-Baptiste will also find love in an unexpected place.The story is entirely that of Jean Baptiste – he is present on every page. He’s conscientious, and good to his men, but can be persuaded to let his hair down occasionally. The young engineer is a very likeable hero and an interesting young man. In between the gruelling work to reclaim the ground from the cemetery, we do get glimpses of the bustling markets and streets around the Les Halles area of Paris where the novel is set, and even radical murmurings. The historical detail is both rich and absolutely spot on, I liked the way that Miller echoed Victor Hugo in his style when Baratte's former patron is referred to as the 'Compte de S-'.The major business of the novel is the job in hand though. In this respect, (with my tongue in my cheek slightly), it is the opposite of Ken Follett’s enjoyable blockbuster novel The Pillars of the Earth, in which a cathedral is built over generations rather, than removed in a year. In both, however, the work is the star – and it was actually fascinating to read. I will have to re-read Ingenious Pain and catch up on others of Miller’s backlist – I do have most of them in the TBR, as I enjoyed Pure very much indeed. This was a brilliant historical novel with literary nous, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to see it as a Booker longlist contender.

[thejohnsmith · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A thoroughly engaging and interesting novel that centers on the work of a young engineer tasked with the demolition of a church and the cemetery around it – including the exhumation and removal of all those buried there. Set in late 18th Century Paris, just before the French Revolution, the story is rich with atmosphere and well developed characters. I was fascinated before I’d finished the first chapter and by Chapter 6 had reached the “can’t put it down “ stage. A very enjoyable and satisfying read.

[passion4reading_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This has got to be one of the most beautifully written contemporary British novels of recent years. Andrew Miller's writing is a revelation: apparently effortless, wonderfully evocative prose to savour that conjures up the Paris quarter of les Halles and the cemetery of les Innocents before the start of the French Revolution, but with a palpable civil unrest already tainting the air, along with the stink of the overflowing burial ground. From the first sentence the reader is transported through time and space, following Jean-Baptiste Baratte, the engineer from Normandy, as he tries to make his way in the capital, tasked with the almost impossible: how to empty the ancient cemetery of les Innocents, and destroy its church and sexton's house, in order to purify the Paris air? Over the subsequent twelve months, we follow Jean-Baptiste and an eclectic assortment of friends and acquaintances as they encounter bones dating back centuries, mummified corpses, accidental death and suicide, rape and insanity, but also friendship and love, leaving me quite breathless at the end. Wonderful stuff that could inspire someone to become a writer; heartily recommended.

[aprille_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I liked this book quite a bit. In 1785 a young engineer is tasked with removing a cemetery in the center of Paris that stinks and affects the health of all the inhabitants. He hires a team of miners and they set to work on the distasteful work of digging out the bones, and transporting them to their new home. Metaphorically, of course, the cemetery is the ancien regime itself, and the work of dismantling the cemetery foreshadows the revolution that is on the horizon. The engineer undergoes a transformation along the way from naive idealistic young man to a competent manager who has a clearer understanding of life and what gives it meaning.

[mercury57 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

t’s 1785. Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a young, ambitious engineer, arrives at the palace of Versailles hoping to get a Ministerial commission that will help him make a mark on the world. He "dreams of building utopias where the church and its superstitions will be replaced by schools run by men like himself." Instead, the task he is handed is not one of construction but of demolition.In the Rue de Saint Innocents stands the oldest cemetery in Paris. More than 50,000 victims of bubonic plague were reputedly buried here in one day. The subterranean wall separating the living from the dead has collapsed and the bones and decaying flesh have released a miasma which fouls the air, taints the food and even the breath of those who live within its shadow.It takes a year for Barratte and his team of miners to open the graves and clear away the past. It’s a job which almost costs Baratte his life as the cemetery becomes a kind of hell of burning fires and walls of bones and skulls. Few of those involved in the enterprise emerge unscathed physically or mentally. When they began they imagined they were engaged in a noble cause, building the foundations of a better future in which their endeavours would be marked for posterity.“They will name squares after us ……..the men who purified Paris,” declares the foreman of works. But as the graves are emptied and the cemetery's wild flowers wither, so the vitality drains out of the workers. Tobacco, alcohol, weekly visits by prostitutes – nothing can distract the team of miners from the sense of loss. ‘I had some good in me once' one observes bleakly.Baratte too undergoes a transformation. The naïve young man is easy prey when he first arrives in the city. It takes little to persuade him to exchange his sensible brown suit for one of pistachio green silk or to join a group of drunken vandals who move about the city under cover of night painting obscenities about Queen Marie Antoinette. But it is not long before he finds he cannot sleep without a sedative and his ideals and belief in the power of reason are destroyed.The cleansing of the cemetery is an extended metaphor for the cleansing that we as readers know these citizens will experience shortly, although on a significantly bigger scale. Miller provides plenty of symbolic references to the French Revolution, including naming one of characters Dr Guillotin and including dialogue that can easily be read on two levels. Take this example, from Baratte's first meeting with the Ministerial aide, who gives him his commission:It is poisoning the city. Left long enough, it may poison not just local shopkeepers but the king himself. The king and his ministers.Yes, my lord.It is to be removed.Removed?Destroyed. Church and cemetery. The place is to be made sweet again. Use fire, use brimstone. Use whatever you need to get rid of it.Pure is Andrew Miller’s sixth novel and it won him the 2011 Costa Book of the Year award. The judges praised it as a "structurally and stylistically flawless historical novel." Miller deftly avoids some of the biggest failings I see in many historical novels - the author's tendency to want to drown readers in period detail and factual information and then to make their characters speak in a kind of cod 'period language'.Not so for Miller. He's clearly done his research but only uses it to bring the characters and location alive through snatches of information about clothes, food and daily domestic life . His descriptions of the stench that pervades the neighbourhood were so powerful I could almost smell it on the page I had in my hands. (rather like my feeling on reading the Paris scenes early on in Patrick Sushkind’s Perfume).In all, for me Pure was a gripping read.

[sanddune_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

At the end of the eighteenth century the ancient church and cemetery of Les Innocents in the heart of Paris has become a place which inspires only disgust. For centuries the burial place of the city, the number of bodies have far outstripped the capacity of the ground to cope with them:They tell me that during one single outbreak of the plague fifty thousand corpses were buried at les Innocents in less than a month. And so it continued, corpse upon corpse, the death-carts queuing along the rue Saint-Denis. There were even burials at night by torchlight. Corpse upon corpse. A number beyond computation. Vast legions packed into a smudge of earth no bigger than a potato field.But by the year 1785 the result of this overcrowding of the dead have become impossible to ignore. The smell inside the church and cemetery have become almost unbearable: it pervades the surrounding area tainting everything it touches. And there is danger as well, those living around the cemetary find that to enter their own cellar can mean the risk of unconsciousness and death, as the noxious gases seep through the earth. And the final straw comes after heavy rains, when a retaining wall collapses letting the contents of a burial pit spill into the cellar of an unfortunate neighbour. And so the engineer Jean-Baptiste Barratte is appointed to deal with the problem once and for all: to disinterr the remains of les Innocents and transport them to a place outside the city, to demolish the church and to make clean the ground. But not all those living in the area are equally keen to see the destruction of the cemetery, in particular its priest Pere Colbert, and the daughter of the family with whom the engineer lodges, Zygette. And as the work proceeds Jean-Baptiste finds that he has more issues to deal with than merely resentment of his task.It was actually the story of the cemetery and its destruction, in all its slightly gruesome details, that I enjoyed most about this work, as well as the evocation of a Paris on the borders of change. Set only very slightly before the French Revolution, the idea of change pervades the book, and the cemetery seems to represent the corrupt and moribund ancien regime waiting to be destroyed. Even the glamour of Versailles is clearly a facade: on his visit to receive his instructions the fabled mirrors are there, but tarnished and dusty. I didn't find that the fate of the characters interested me as much as the fate of the cemetery, certainly at the beginning of the book. Overall, a good read, but I have to say that most people at my RL book club enjoyed it much more than I did. Several loved it, and would obviously have given it five stars if they'd been rating it in that way. But for me it was a good solid enjoyable read but not a special one. But I'd be very happy to try some of the author's other historical novels.

[helengress · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An abandoned and overfilled graveyard and church poses a health hazard to the people of Paris. An engineer is commissioned to make the air pure by emptying the graves and relocating the bones to an empty quarry. The work is fraught with unsurprisingly disagreeable delays - the workers and their lives are described in detail. I enjoyed the read- but will not recommend it to many.

[krista23 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

For those that enjoy historical fiction here's a pick for you! I don't read much historical fiction but what got me interested in this particular one is it's set right outside the Palace of Versailles during the time of Louis XVI. I am a fan of the movie Marie Antoinette with Kirsten Dunst and thought that it would be interesting to see what it was like for the people living outside the palace during the same time. While our main character's job is most undesirable, and most likely to fail. He only does some of the dirty work himself. Soon after arriving to clean out the remains of an overflowing cemetery he gets a crew of 30 men to dig. They find many things during their exhumations. Even though Jean-Baptiste is hired for this rather untasteful task, it does consume a year of his life. There is much more to this story than digging up the bodies. The church that lies above, in which the bodies are slowly encroaching and the nearby shopping center. The conflicts as well as intermixing concerns of both, and more!He does find comfort in the arms of Héloise and a friend in Armand. Of course at the heart of the story is that there is revolution brewing. People are upset and want enlightenment. And during this day and age, their lives will literally go up in flames. A melancholy story full of dead bodies, but with love and friendship during one of the hardest years in their lives.

[tina1969_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A year of bones, of grave-dirt, relentless work. Of mummified corpses and chanting priests.A year of rape, suicide, sudden death. Of friendship too. Of desire. Of love...A year unlike any other he has lived.Deep in the heart of Paris, its oldest cemetery is, by 1785, overflowing, tainting the very breath of those who live nearby. Into their midst comes Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a young, provincial engineer charged by the king with demolishing it.At first Baratte sees this as a chance to clear the burden of history, a fitting task for a modern man of reason. But before long, he begins to suspect that the destruction of the cemetery might be a prelude to his own.My Thoughts:I was given this book last month at book group and I gave up after 30 pages. When I went to book group all my fellow members raved about how good it was and I had missed a treat. So I have given it another go.I stll feel that 30 pages was enough first time around. I just don’t get it ! The only positive things that I can say is that the book was well written and the historical elements of the book. That is it for me. I just cannot see where my fellow book grouos members are coming from.Not for me I’m afraid.

[lara335 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

About the clearing of a Parisian cemetary before the French revolution. Although this is an extended metaphor for the 'cleansing' the revolution demanded, I was( unfairly) disappointed in the claustrophobic atmosphere, expecting it, from the cover blurb to be more overtly political and explanatory of the period. On the positive, very specific, original and imaginative. Reading Wikipedia Les Innocents was so overcrowded that corpses couldn't decompose, and in the clearing, body fat was sold off to make candles and soap, Surprised Miller held back from this shocking fact.

[edgeworth_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Towards the end of the 18th century, at the heart of the Enlightenment, the cemetery Les Innocents at the centre of Paris is full. The ground is swollen with the dead. Basement walls break open under the pressure, corpses tumbling into them. The very air is tainted, poisoning the food and the breath of those who live nearby.Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a young provincial engineer, is hired by the government to “purify” it – to dig the corpses up, remove the tainted earth, make the place clean again. From the very beginning he is uneasy about the project, sitting on a bench outside the palace in Versailles after he is issued his orders, trying to convince himself that “it cannot be impossible to conceive of this work as something worthy, serious. Something for the greater good.”Pure is a heavily allegorical novel, the destruction of the cemetery tearing apart Baratte himself, and prefacing the greater “purification” that is to come with the French Revolution, just a few short years away. I suspect some of the novel’s metaphors and allegories are quite explicit, but if your knowledge of French history is thin – as mine is – you might have trouble picking up on them.Pure is also one of those novels that’s difficult to review, because I didn’t feel particularly strongly about it. I would describe it as: “good… not great.” It’s certainly not forgettable; the concept is fascinating, and it creates a powerful image of a cemetery being disinterred, bone by bone, fires burning day and night, a kind of hell at the heart of Paris. But – although it’s certainly a good, competent novel, and one that has received critical acclaim – I personally wasn’t captured by it.It does, however, have the most awesome cover ever. (And yes, I know where it comes from.)

[helensdatter · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is already one of my favourite books of all time, and I am only a quartet of the way in.

[jan0fleming · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Synopsis
A year of bones, of grave-dirt, relentless work. Of mummified corpses and chanting priests.

A year of rape, suicide, sudden death. Of friendship too. Of desire. Of love...

A year unlike any other he has lived.

Deep in the heart of Paris, its oldest cemetery is, by 1785, overflowing, tainting the very breath of those who live nearby. Into their midst comes Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a young, provincial engineer charged by the king with demolishing it.

At first Baratte sees this as a chance to clear the burden of history, a fitting task for a modern man of reason. But before long, he begins to suspect that the destruction of the cemetery might be a prelude to his own.

[jayne_charles_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I can't deny the skill that went into writing this - it's 18th century France to its core (and I've no idea why I'm so sure since I obviously didn't live in 18th century France, but there was a strong sense of authenticity about it), but I didn't find it an enjoyable read. An engineer is engaged to excavate a putrefying graveyard. He does it. If you're interested in how such a task might be completed this book is for you. But I was looking for a compelling plot and I didn't find one. Of the shopping list of dramatic events listed on the back page little is heard until close to the end when several of them happen at once, taking up relatively little time, and normal grave-excavation service is promptly resumed. The most intriguing character in the book was perhaps Ziguette, but she promptly disappears never to be seen again. And what exactly was the attraction between the protagonist and Heloise which apparently springs from nowhere. Big questions weren't answered, or at least not in a way I could understand. Books like this often make me feel as though I am missing something: some allegory or some hint I have failed to pick up on. The mummified bodies for example - were we supposed to know who they were, or what connection they had to the other characters? It went over my head if so. I had previously read and not enjoyed a book by this author, and this went much the same way. It's very strong writing, but in the way that magnets can be strong, and yet still repel each other.

[laurochka-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book was not quite what I had expected. I did, however, still enjoy it. The macabre setting lends itself to supernatural expectations but the natural is just as strange. Jean-Baptisite is not the most sympathetic of characters but his journey is an interesting one.

[undstra · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Nice, enjoyable. Read it.

[pennyanne_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Both very interesting and very dull! Based on the true story of the destruction of the cemetery of Les Innocents in Paris prior to the French Revolution and the removal of all the bones to the new catacombs, this book should have been fascinating and un-put-downable. Unfortunately the characters were very one dimensional (and in some cases simply inexplicable) and I found myself skimming pages fairly regularly.

[blacksheepdances · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Jean-Baptiste Baratte is a modern man, well-versed in Voltaire and ready to leave his peasant upbringing behind. Eager to display his engineering talents, he meets the minister at Versailles to receive his first significant appointment. Confident, composed, although a bit cocky, he really can’t foresee any challenge his enlightened education can’t overcome. But, all his plans of illustrious success are somewhat hampered by the assignment he receives, one that is couched in a veiled threat. His job will be to demolish a dangerously aged Medieval church as well as removing the entire cemetery attached to it, on the Rue de Les Innocents. The minister explains,"It is poisoning the city. Left long enough, it may poison not just local shopkeepers but the king himself. The king and his ministers.Yes, my lord.It is to be removed.Removed?Destroyed. Church and cemetery. The place is to be made sweet again. Use fire, use brimstone. Use whatever you need to get rid of it."Given such a grotesque assignment, he quickly realizes that the challenge lies in more than just removing bodies. The task itself is monumental, given the crowded city and the few who wish to work on such a gory task. Baratte hesitates to begin, and as he settles in to his new job, he finds avoidance is his first impulse. What better time to buy a new suit and get drunk? A fashionable pistachio green suit that is purchased by trading in his father’s dark classic suit is a symbolic gesture that sets the scene for his new undertaking, and his new pal Armand, organ player at the Church, shows him exactly what and how to drink in order to forget the dead he’ll soon be faced with.Thus, the novel begins, with Baratte and Armand and several other characters dealing with the sentimental and awkward removal of a beloved church. Each character is fully developed, and fascinating in the way they interact. Besides the intriguing plot, just seeing the ensemble of unlikely individuals become close-knit among grave circumstances makes the narrative surprisingly enjoyable. Virtually everyone changes in some way, and none more than Baratte."But are his ambitions what they were? Are they, for example, less ambitious? And if so, what has replaced them? Nothing heroic, it seems. Nothing to brag of. A desire to start again, more honestly. To test each idea in the light of experience. To stand as firmly as he can in the world’s fabulous dirt; live among uncertainty, mess, beauty. Live bravely if possible. Bravery will be necessary, he has no doubt of that. The courage to act. The courage to refuse. "Given his thoughts above, you may imagine the fate of the pistachio suit.The story is unique and clever, and astonishingly fast-paced. I’m not normally a fan of the historical fiction genre, and I’m completely unfamiliar with this period in French history, but I was completely absorbed. However, I have to mention, in hopes of assisting others, that some reviews of the book (most notably the New York Times) seem to imply a supernatural element, of vampires and some sort of wolf-spirit. I didn’t get that at all. One strong wind was described as howling like a wolf, but that’s it. Two well-preserved bodies are inexplicably uncovered in the removal, but no indication or allusion is made to them of being vampires. So, while there is madness and community resistance to Baratte’s assignment, there’s nothing that feels otherworldly about the story.

[martitia_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A young engineer accepts the job of emptying an ancient, overflowing cemetery in late 19th-century Paris. The grisly project has unforeseen consequences for the individuals involved. This haunting novel, based on a true-to-life story of urban renewal, possesses a strong sense of place.Readalikes: Human Traces by Sebastian Faulks