Pure
by Andrew Miller promises rich, illuminating and even exciting experience,
intrigue mixed with history, science blended with romance. Set in the year
1785, the novel inhabits pre-revolutionary Paris, focusing on a small area near
rue Saint Denis, where there is a church. In the church there is a neglected
organ, which cries out to be played. And, also nearby, there is a graveyard,
Les Innocents, a much inhabited though disused and derelict plot, if inhabited
might be the word to describe the subterranean tower blocks of coffins.
Word
has come down from the King - a king who, as we know, will himself be coming
down in the near future - that the area is up for re-development. No, this is
not a modern tale of fractured communities, corruption and greedy developers,
but an eighteenth century examination of fear, religion and, in some ways, the
supernatural. It is a cemetery that is to be dug out, its contents reassembled
and then moved, and there are beliefs associated with that age, or perhaps any
age, that might be aroused.
Jean-Baptiste
Baratte, an out of town engineer with only a small amount of work to his
credit, is chosen to carry out the task. He moves to Paris and finds rooms near
his project, rooms cheek by jowl with the varieties of life one expects to find
in a city jammed with humanity. There’s a strange girl called Ziguette on hand.
She is clearly going to play her part in the plot. But whether that part will
be in relation to the engineer’s work or play is initially unclear.
Of
course there is no shortage of service industry or local free enterprise in
eighteenth century Paris. And so there is no shortage of sensuous encounters,
wine, food, grime, laundry and other related activity that humans might pursue
while they claim to be alive. An occasional famous name calls by, and other
characters wander in and out of the tale. The dead, of course, are always
around.
But
there is also a political dimension, and larger historical possibilities,
because this is pre-revolutionary France, where an Austrian harlot plies her
expensive and highly visible trade at public expense. And there is also a
philosophical dimension, since this purports to be the dawning of an age of
reason, where Voltaire satirises those ideas that foster the kind of fears that
the digging out of a cemetery might generate.
If
these are the themes, then it is the job of the engineer Baratte to assemble
them, along with his team of labourers, to achieve an end. And that is where
Andrew Miller’s Pure rather fails to deliver. The elements are all there - the
sensuality, philosophy, politics, history, intrigue and, not least, the sense
of time and place. But none of these aspects rises above the incidental.
Neither the literary atmosphere nor the immediate narrative strands seem to
come alive. The political and philosophical angles are around, and crying out
to be developed, but they appear in hints and asides, without any involvement.
Pure becomes a perfectly satisfying read, a sometimes vivid novel that takes
the reader to a particular place and time. But strangely it never really seems
to come alive and, when surprising events emerge, it feels like they have been
concocted to prevent further drift. Pure is a book that could easily
disappoint, for it promises much. Though there are aspects, particularly the
political and philosophical angles, that are not fully realised, perhaps not
even attempted, it remains a worthwhile and satisfying read. And in the end it
reminds us, as a city of the dead is cleared out, that in the very near future
French society was to embark upon some clearing out of a different kind.
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