Skip to main content

The Evening and the Morning

 


Book Review

Title: The Evening and the Morning

Author: Ken Follett

Publisher: Viking, 2020

Pages: 915

Ken Follett is a master when it comes to narrating tales about the medieval period. His Kingsbridge trilogy went on to sell millions of copies in various languages. The Evening and the Morning is a prequel to the trilogy. It tells the story of some very fascinating characters who lived at the turn of the second millennium CE. The plot is set in Kings Bridge (as Deng’s Ferry came to be known in that period with the replacement of the ferry by a bridge) and surrounding places in the period of 997-1097.

Ragna, a Norman noblewoman, falls in love with Wilf, a British aristocrat without knowing that he was already married. Those were days when the British men could just “set aside” an existing wife in order to take a new one and thus Ragna becomes Wilf’s legal wife. Those were days when priests had wives and children though not always openly. Even bishops and cardinals had concubines as well as other clandestine pleasures. Wilf’s brother, Wynstan, is one such bishop whose venality knows no limits. They have one more brother, Wigelm, whose brain is not as clever as that of his brothers but the brutality of his heart does give them a competition. Ragna has to deal with not only these vile men but also their mother. She has much to endure.

Aldred is a noble monk who tries to bring more knowledge, light, and wisdom into the dark world that he lives in. Wynstan won’t make it easy for him and he has much to endure too. Ragna’s goodness becomes his sustenance to some extent.

There is a younger man, Edgar, who is an illiterate carpenter whose destiny becomes inextricably intertwined with those of Ragna and Aldred. All these three characters are driven by certain ideals such as integrity, justice, and compassion. But all the powerful people in their world are wicked. Why is goodness so helpless? This is one of the fundamental questions raised in the massive novel.

The state and the church were always in collusion in those days. Even now the collusion continues though not so overtly. Both the church and the state worked for keeping a few aristocrats, a small group of powerful men, securely in charge of everything. Everything includes the ordinary people too. People were just tools to be wielded as situations demanded. How Bishop Wynstan uses and throws people at the quirk of his will is just an example.

Follett keeps the reader engaged from the first page to the last. The plot moves from one gripping incident to another. This novel is yet another unputdownable thriller from him.

PS. October is the month of The Blogchatter’s #MyFriendAlexa campaign of which this blog is a part.

 

Comments

  1. Pr@GunOctober 2, 2020 at 9:34 PM

    Look forward to read this, have never read Ken earlier. Thriller are really my favorite. Thanks for reviewing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 2, 2020 at 10:20 PM

      Follett is charming. He re-creates the period convincingly.

      Delete
  2. SwatiOctober 8, 2020 at 12:42 PM

    Looking for something like this I will give this a read . Thanks for the review.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 9, 2020 at 1:29 PM

      It's really gripping especially if you are interested in ancient periods.

      Delete
  3. Jyoti JhaOctober 8, 2020 at 1:34 PM

    I have read 'Eye of the needle' by Ken Follett. This is very precise and well-penned review. Definitely adding this one to my TBR list.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AmritaOctober 9, 2020 at 9:22 AM

    This sounds like a gripping story .I like how you reviewed it keeping the suspense intact

    ReplyDelete
  5. Priya IyerOctober 18, 2020 at 6:15 PM

    This sounds promising. Thriller and suspense are a favourite genre. Thank you for the detailed review. Will definitely check this one out.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Being Christian in BJP’s India

A moment of triumph for India’s women’s cricket team turned unexpectedly into a controversy about religious faith and expression, thanks to some right-wing footsloggers. After her stellar performance in the semi-final of the Wormen’s World Cup (2025), Jemimah Rodrigues thanked Jesus for her achievement. “Jesus fought for me,” she said quoting the Bible: “Stand still and God will fight for you” [1 Samuel 12:16]. Some BJP leaders and their mindless followers took strong exception to that and roiled the religious fervour of the bourgeoning right wing with acerbic remarks. If Ms Rodrigues were a Hindu, she would have thanked her deity: Ram or Hanuman or whoever. Since she is a Christian, she thanked Jesus. What’s wrong in that? If she was a nonbeliever like me, God wouldn’t have topped the list of her benefactors. Religion is a talisman for a lot of people. There’s nothing wrong in imagining that some god sitting in some heaven is taking care of you. In fact, it gives a lot of psychologic...
26 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

The wisdom of the Mahabharata

Illustration by Gemini AI “Krishna touches my hand. If you can call it a hand, these pinpricks of light that are newly coalescing into the shape of fingers and palm. At his touch something breaks, a chain that was tied to the woman-shape crumpled on the snow below. I am buoyant and expansive and uncontainable – but I always was so, only I never knew it! I am beyond the name and gender and the imprisoning patterns of ego. And yet, for the first time, I’m truly Panchali. I reach with my other hand for Karna – how surprisingly solid his clasp! Above us our palace waits, the only one I’ve ever needed. Its walls are space, its floor is sky, its center everywhere. We rise; the shapes cluster around us in welcome, dissolving and forming and dissolving again like fireflies in a summer evening.” What is quoted above is the final paragraph of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s novel The Palace of Illusions which I reread in the last few days merely because I had time on my hands and this book hap...
12 comments
Read more

Hollow Leaders

A century ago, T S Eliot wrote about the hollowness of his countrymen in a poem titled The Hollow Men . The World War I had led to a lot of disillusionment with the collapse of powerful empires and the savagery of the war itself which unleashed barbaric slaughter. The generation that survived was known as the “Lost Generation.” Before the war, Western civilisation was sustained by certain values and principles given by religion, the Enlightenment, and Victorian morality. The war showed that science and technology, which could improve life, had actually produced machine guns, gas warfare, and mass death. Religion became hollow. People became hollow. “We are the hollow men,” Eliot’s poem began. The civilisation looked sophisticated from outside, but it was empty inside. There is a lot of religion today in the world. My country has allegedly become so religious that it decides what you will eat, wear, which god you will pray to, and even the language for communication. The ultimat...
16 comments
Read more