In another exploration of historical lacunae, Miller (Ingenious Pain) delves into pre-Revolutionary Paris, where a pestilential, ancient cemetery acts as metaphor for the blighted reign of King Louis XVI. Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a young Norman engineer who prides himself on his faculties of reason, is commissioned by the king's minister to close the centuries-old les Innocents cemetery, whose noxious sprawl threatens to poison adjacent neighborhoods. Jean-Baptiste moves in nearby and begins orchestrating the massive exhumation, hiring miners to dig up the thousands of bodies and cart away the bones. Among those whose lives will be changed by his commission are Jean-Baptiste's friend Armand, the organist at les Innocents' church; and Héloïse, a literate prostitute, who becomes his mistress. But as the digging commences, unexpected complications arise: risk of cave-ins, infection, rats, bats, madness, fire, and the special danger posed by his landlords' vengeful daughter, Ziguette. Despite all obstacles, Jean-Baptiste forges on with his ghoulish task, but at what cost to reason? Although the book's dramas fail to coalesce, Miller recreates pre-Revolutionary Paris with astonishing verisimilitude, and through Jean-Baptiste, illuminates the years preceding le deluge. Agent: Zoe Pagnamenta. (July)
This is a tale about "the beauty and mystery of what is most ordinary"... Miller lingers up close on details: sour breath, decaying objects, pretty clothes, flames, smells, eyelashes... He is also alive to the dramatic possibilities offered by late-18th-century Paris, a fetid and intoxicating city on the brink of revolution... Miller intimately and pacily imagines how it might have felt to witness it.
His recreation of pre-Revolutionary Paris is extraordinarily vivid and imaginative, and his story is so gripping that you'll put your life on hold to finish it. Expect this on the Booker longlist, at the very least
Very atmospheric... Although the theme may sound macabre, Miller's eloquent novel overflows with vitality and colour. It is packed with personal and physical details that evoke 18th-century Paris with startling immediacy. Above all he brings off that difficult trick of making the reader care about an unsymapthetic character. If you enjoyed Patrick Suskind's Perfume, you'll love this.
…like [Hilary] Mantel, [Miller] writes historical novels that are not just pastiche or painstaking waxworks re-creations, but books that make the past seem oddly contemporary…This inventive and surprising novel is…elegantly written and intricately constructed, with an ending that…cleverly reflects the beginning. And yet for all its neatness, Pure is ultimately a book about impurity, what Baratte comes to recognize as "the world's fabulous dirt." It's an artful, carefully wrought novel that ultimately comes down in favor of mess.
Some stories are too wonderful—too filled with wonders—to set in the present. They can't really be called historical fiction because they don't serve history so much as plunder it to invent what might have been. Such is the case with Pure , by Andrew Miller, a novel set during the Age of Enlightenment that pays homage not to the dawn of reason but to its witching hour, teeming with all that reason mocks—hobgoblins, specters and whatever else might be lurking in the dark. A novel of ideas disguised as a ghost story, voluptuously atmospheric, Pure exerts a sensual hold over the reader.
The New York Times Book Review
A Best Fiction Book of 2012. "...Miller recreates pre-Revolutionary Paris with astonishing verisimilitude, and through Jean-Baptiste, illuminates the years preceding le deluge." - Publishers Weekly
Les Innocents Cemetery has held the corpses of Paris since the fourteenth century. It’s now 1785, four years before the Revolution, and overflowing tombs and foul air have made the whole neighborhood uninhabitable. Young Jean-Baptiste Baratte, an up-and-coming engineer, has been commissioned to excavate the graves, transfer the bones (with appropriate solemnity and care) to the Catacombs and then destroy the cemetery and its attached church. Miller’s story focuses on atmosphere, and Ralph Cosham’s measured proficiency accentuates its pace and mood. His authoritative enunciation complements the gravity of Baratte’s task. The listener feels the weight of the task and its ramifications as all must choose the between the reeking past and the fresh air of the future. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
