An Instance of the Fingerpost: Explore the murky world of 17th-century Oxford in this iconic historical thriller

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Ištraukėlė, kur tuometiniai moxlininkai atlieka cheminius eksperimentus su nuodingais milteliais, Marie Curie vibes: Štalis patenkintas krenštelėjo, tada paėmė po žiupsnelį kiekvienų miltelių ir dviem judesiais užmetė ant įkaitintos geležies. Stebėjome, kaip milteliai sušnypštė, kaip pakilo tiršti baltų dūmų debesys. Štalis pauostė dūmus ir dar kartą krenkštelėjo. Well, maybe one man is more reliable than the other, and maybe I already knew after Marco da Cola’s version that there was more to everything he had said. But not because I thought he had been lying. It was more a feeling that there was more behind it all. Maybe I guessed, at the very least, one part correctly. But that didn’t diminish my enjoyment one bit. On the contrary, it was ingenious. This is what superb storytelling is about. Taking one part, which - seemingly - is at the heart of the story, but going ahead and showing the complexity of human nature, which ultimately always ends in one question: What drives us?

Iain Pears (Author of An Instance of the Fingerpost) - Goodreads Iain Pears (Author of An Instance of the Fingerpost) - Goodreads

The Name of the Rose will now have to share that position with An Instance of the Fingerpost . This book is a master piece of storytelling. I was glued to it from the first – or rather, I had my earphones glued to my ears, as I listened to the audio version. the humanity of at least one of the narrators and it is she who saves the novel from a certain dryness. Before the war, he had unearthed an obscure Provençal poet of the fourteenth century, Olivier de Noyen, and a philosophical manuscript, 'The Dream of Scipio', written by a fifth-century Roman aristocrat, Manlius Hippomanes. This mysterious text links the three men, as does their love for a woman - Sophia, Rebecca, Julia - a kind of Universal Muse who wafts inspiringly through time. Well he was against slavery, but if the crusty bastard who captains the vessel is willing to hold prayer meetings with them all across the ocean than he was in. It is so nice to turn a healthy profit and save souls at the same time. We are supposed to believe this investment is about souls and not about gold.The four parts of the novel are preceded by Epigraphs taken from Francis Bacon's Novum Organum. The first three quotations describe three of Bacon's four Idols of the mind. The fourth quotation is the source of the title. The quotation is much abbreviated, with no ellipses showing the omissions. The full text (using a slightly different translation of the book) is as follows: Da Cola is familiar with the heresy that holds that a messiah is born in each generation, and is betrayed, sacrificed and rises again (foretelling Sarah's fate), but I've been unable to confirm that it's a real historical heresy, even with the use of Google. Montanism is/was real, and a woman called Prisca was one of the leaders, but the bit about the regular appearance of Messiahs might be an invention (or might be that Pears has access to more information than Wikipedia!)

An Instance of the Fingerpost Review: An Instance of the Fingerpost

The bestselling An Instance of the Fingerpost (1997) marked a new departure for Pears; far more structurally and stylistically ambitious than the Italian series, it suggested that he was developing his voice as a serious novelist, as did his move from HarperCollins to Cape. But, on the evidence of the new novel, it looks as if An Instance of the Fingerpost may have been a one-off. Oliver Cromwell, not really relevant to this book except for the destabilized government he left after his death. Medicinos eksperimentai, kraujo perpylimai, teorijos apie optimistinius elementus kraujyje ir pan, visa tai, kaip buvo suvokiamas kūnas ir sveikata. Aišku, daugelį to galima rasti tokiose knygose kaip Medieval Bodies, bet argi ten įdomiau, nei kai ginčijasi studentai ir čia pat atlikinėja eksperimentus su nelegaliai nusipirktais lavonais? Noooo. with perfect mastery Pears gradually takes us from an unexplained death in a small college town to a revelation that could shake the foundations of England and the world.

Iain Pears was recommended to me by a highly intelligent academic I know, someone whose opinion I respect when it comes to the intellectual. So I guess it fits that I find his books to be high quality fiction that's excellent and sometimes just a little above my head. Whilst some elements of fingerpost design were prescribed during the period when their introduction became most widespread, there was plenty of scope for distinctive spread of designs which remains to today.

AN INSTANCE OF THE FINGERPOST | Kirkus Reviews

Readers will get a feel for the practice of medicine, justice, science, alchemy, and the difficulty of life for those not fortunate to be well born.But whether I missed the clues, or the author simply didn’t leave any clues, doesn’t matter. An Instance of the Fingerpost is simply mesmerising; fascinating in its ability to show what life was like shortly after Charles II. was restored; how science was a subordinate part of religious beliefs; how political ambitions could elevate or destroy a person’s life. Jill wrote: "I was willing to go along with the suggestion that Nancy was the messiah, and that there was one in each generation, but the fact that she was resurrected without much opposition and then sent abroad did seem rather a wet squib ending. ."