Pure (Miller novel)

Plot

The novel centres around a young engineer named Jean-Baptiste Baratte, who is tasked with the removal of the Les Innocents cemetery from Les Halles, Paris in 1786 (the Place Joachim-du-Bellay now occupies the area) and the removal of its church. Baratte is an engineer with a single decorative bridge, built in his small home-town, comprising his entire career and, as such, is somewhat surprised by his appointment; he does, however, endeavour to complete his task.

The cemetery has been in use for many years but, given the number of people buried in such a small area, the bodies are no longer decomposing properly. They have begun to overflow and fall into the neighbouring houses as greater excavations take place and basement walls are weakened. The entire area is also permeated with a foul smell, turning fresh produce rotten in far shorter times than natural and tainting the breath of those who live there. Baratte finds that he has both friends and enemies in the area – the cemetery is both loved and hated by the people of the district. He finds resistance from all sides, notably Ziguette who strikes Baratte during his sleep in opposition to his work. He befriends the church's flamboyant organist named Armand, recruits his old colleague Lecoeur to assist with the excavation, is monitored by the infamous Guillotin and falls in love with Heloïse, widely known in the area as a whore.

Characters

Themes

The novel takes place immediately before the French Revolution and, while not discussed in the novel, a number of sights and incidents foreshadow the impending events. Clare Clark, in The Guardian, stated "as Baratte's story unfolds, the impending revolution hangs over the narrative like the blade of the guillotine to come", identifying a number of auguries of the future turmoil; including "an organist play[ing] to an empty church", the local theatre putting on a production of Beaumarchais' The Marriage of Figaro; and a cart displaying the phrase "M Hulot et Fils: Déménageurs à la Noblesse" on its side (English: M Hulot and Son: Movers to the Nobility). In The Week, Michael Bywater stated he felt that the novel has "a sense in the air that something decisive is going to happen, and happen soon".

Thomas Quinn for The Big Issue opined that the removal of the cemetery as a whole could be construed as Miller asking "whether we should sweep away the past in the name of progress" or if we should be "confronting set ideas about what makes us human in the first place".

Miller also aimed to imbue the novel with a sense of anxiety, especially concerning the decisions Jean-Baptiste must take. Commenting on fiction in general in an interview with Lorna Bradbury for The Daily Telegraph, Miller stated that "a novel is a collection of anxieties held together, more or less well, more or less interestingly, by the chicken wire of plot". Bradbury goes on to state "that is absolutely the case with Pure, which details multiple counts of insanity as the panic-inducing business of razing the cemetery takes hold". Of Pure specifically, Miller stated that "I'm interested in what anxiety does to people", "in what happens when they can't respond the way the world expects them to. What happens when our sense of ourselves falls away under the pressure of circumstances? What's left? That's a very interesting place to be."

Another theme prevalent in the novel is death, influenced in part by the death of Miller's father, to whom the book is dedicated. Miller stated that "after the age of fortysomething, death is a taste in your mouth, and never goes away again". The reviewer for The Australian called the novel "a meditation on death and the frailty of the body and spirit".

Development

Miller first heard about the clearing of the Les Innocents cemetery ten years before writing the novel, when reading a book by French medievalist and historian, Philippe Ariès; specifically his 1977 work entitled L'Homme devant la mort, or The Hour of Our Death. Ariès' book did not go into a great deal of detail concerning this actual event, however Miller was "taken by the theatricality" of it and decided to write a novel based around the exhumation. In an interview with Kira Cochrane he stated the novel "appealed to [him] as being interesting, visually interesting", stating "it was when it all happened that made it stand out. It's the 1780s, a few years before the French revolution". Miller further stated that his father's occupation as a doctor also had some bearing in his interest in the human body, stating "I grew up looking at these things – my Beano and Dandy were the BMJ and The Lancet". Miller decided not to include any French dialogue in the novel as "it is so pretentious" in an English-language novel, stating "I was afraid that my editor would strike it out".

Publication history

Novel's title

The novel's title can be attributed to a number of aspects of the work. The purification of the cemetery and the recent change in social mores (in relation to dirt and decay) being the most immediately apparent. James Kidd, writing for The Independent, stated "if this suggests one definition of purity, others are suggested by political undercurrents. Namely, the ideals that helped shape the French Revolution: Voltaire's call to reason, Rousseau's call to equality, and Robespierre's call to arms."

Cover

The cover, created by Royston Knipe, was based on Francisco Goya's etching The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. It features Baratte in his pistachio green silk Charvet suit replacing the recumbent Goya in his self-portrait. Instead of the owls and bats which assail Goya in The Sleep of Reason, Knipe used ravens. The cover was noted by The Guardian writer John Dugdale, in an article about the marketing aspect of book cover design, as being unique in the current market. He stated that; along with the covers for The Sense of an Ending and The Tiger's Wife; "None of the three looks like anything else in bookshops".

Audio adaptations

A Sweet Talk production of Pure was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 as part of the Book at Bedtime programme from 20–31 August 2012; it was read by John Sessions, abridged by Jeremy Osborne and produced by Rosalynd Ward.

The novel was also the inspiration for two songs written by Bath based musicians, The Bookshop Band, namely "The downfall of Les Innocents" and "The Engineer's Paris" from their album Into The Farthest Reaches.

Reception

The novel received almost universal praise, with reviewers praising Miller's approach to the subject, his vividly rendered characters and setting and his eloquent prose.

In a review for The Independent, James Urquhart found the novel to be "richly textured" and that it had "energetic, acutely observed characters"; stating "Miller populates Baratte's quest for equanimity with these lush and tart characters, seductively fleshed out, who collectively help to deliver the bittersweet resolution of Baratte's professional and personal travails." Clare Clark, writing for The Guardian, found that "Miller is a writer of subtlety and skill" and stated that she found the novel to be much like a parable, stating that "Unlike many parables, however, Pure is neither laboured nor leaden. Miller writes like a poet, with a deceptive simplicity – his sentences and images are intense distillations, conjuring the fleeting details of existence with clarity." Clark goes on to say that "Pure defies the ordinary conventions of storytelling, slipping dream-like between lucidity and a kind of abstracted elusiveness. The characters are often opaque. The narrative lacks dramatic structure, unfolding in the present tense much as life does, without clear shape or climax" and found that "The result is a book that is unsettling and, ultimately, optimistic." The Australian's Jennifer Levasseur found Pure to be "Well-executed and inventive", stating that she found the plot "Historically convincing, immediately engaging and intellectually stimulating". She went on to state, of Miller himself: "Miller is the calibre of writer who deserves to be followed regardless of topic, time period or setting because of his astonishing dexterity with language, his piercing observations and his ability to combine rollicking storytelling with depth of character."

Novelist Brian Lynch, writing for the Irish Independent found "The story in Pure is simple, almost dreamlike, a realistic fantasy, a violent fairy tale for adults", stating "At its best Pure shimmers". The novel received two reviews from The Daily Telegraph. Freya Johnston found that "Miller lingers up close on details: sour breath, decaying objects, pretty clothes, flames, smells, eyelashes. He is a close observer of cats" and stated, of Baratte's project as a whole, "Miller intimately imagines how it might have felt to witness it." Holly Kyte found Pure to be "irresistibly compelling" and "Exquisite inside and out". She stated that "Every so often a historical novel comes along that is so natural, so far from pastiche, so modern, that it thrills and expands the mind" and that she found that "Pure is a near-faultless thing: detailed, symbolic and richly evocative of a time, place and man in dangerous flux. It is brilliance distilled, with very few impurities." Suzi Feay, for the Financial Times, stated "Quietly powerful, consistently surprising, Pure is a fine addition to a substantial body of work" and also noted that "Miller's portraits of women and the poor are thoughtful and subtle." Writing for the Daily Express Vanessa Berridge found the novel to be "very atmospheric, if not to say positively creepy at times" and stated that "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." Reviewing for the Daily Mail Clare Colvin stated that the novel "draws you in with hallucinatory power" and that she found that "Miller evokes the underside of Parisian society with assured, vivid detail so that images remain in your mind long after you reach the last page. This is historical fiction with imaginative style."

In a review for The Observer, Leo Robson found the novel to be somewhat underwhelming, stating that "It is disappointing, given the vitality of the novel's setting and set-up, that Miller fails to achieve corresponding dynamism in the development of plot and character", adding that "as a prose writer, Miller appears averse to taking risks, which means no pratfalls – but no glory either". He found the "engineer's progress and his setbacks are narrated in a patient, tight-lipped present tense, and just as the novel rarely concerns itself with anything that doesn't impinge on the destruction of Les Innocents, so it rarely deviates from its obsessive regime of description and dialogue". He did somewhat temper this, however, stating that "It is one of the historical novel's advantages over the topical or journalistic novel that the benchmark is plausibility rather than verifiable authenticity. Success in this effort requires a capacity for immersion and a degree of imagination, and whatever his shortcomings as a prose writer and a storyteller, Andrew Miller is endowed with both."

Awards and nominations

The novel was not longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, to the surprise of a number of reviewers. The novel did, however, win the Costa Book Award in 2011 for the "Best Novel" and "Book of the Year".

Novelist Rose Tremain, writing for The Guardian, identified the novel as one of her two "Books of the year 2011". In 2012, The Observer named it as one of "The 10 best historical novels". It was shortlisted for the 2012 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction, with judges praising the novel as "a wholly unexpected story, richly imagined and beautifully structured"; and the South Bank Award in the "Literature" category. The novel was also short-listed for the "Independent Booksellers' Week" Book Awards, which are voted for by the public through independent book-shops. The marketing campaign for the novel was short-listed in the "Best Overall Package" award by the Book Marketing Society in their Best Marketing Campaign of the Year awards.

Pure was identified as an "Editors' Choice" by The New York Times in June 2012. The novel was also listed on the Belfast Telegraph "Your Top Choice" listing for the best book of the week. Pure has, as of 5 September 2012, been listed twelve times; with the first seven being in position 1. NPR listed it as one of their "Critics' Lists" for summer 2012 in the "Rich Reads: Historical Fiction Fit For A Queen" section, nominated by historical fiction author Madeline Miller who stated that "this is historical fiction at its best."

Costa "Book of the Year"

Speaking about the novel at the awards ceremony in Piccadilly, London, Miller stated that he "had no special sense of this one being the one" and mentioned that "it's a strange journey, you spend three years in a room on your own and then this: a little unsettling but deeply pleasurable"; "It's a very happy occasion". Chair of the judging, editor of the Evening Standard newspaper Geordie Greig, said that the panel were basing their decision partially on the durability and memorability of the work, stating "we were looking for quality". Speaking of the novel itself, Greig called it "a rich and evocative historical novel which engrosses with its vivid portrait of pre-revolutionary France", stating "The qualities of Pure stood out for its memorable gothic tale of morality and mortality."

The judges were undecided over whether the prize should have gone to Matthew Hollis' biography Now All Roads Lead to France instead. The judging panel was locked in a "fierce debate and quite bitter dissent" and eventually used a vote to decide on the winner. Geordie Greig said "it was not unpleasant, it was forthright", stating "it's not like comparing apples and oranges – it's like comparing bananas and curry." Chair for the selection in 2010, web editor for Foyles bookshops Jonathan Ruppin, supported the decision, stating "Like Hilary Mantel, who finally became a major name when she won the Man Booker, Miller should now gain the commercial success his stylish and absorbing novels have long deserved." He goes on to say "Pure perfectly captures the mood of a downtrodden and angry nation, on the verge of overthrowing a self-serving and out-of-touch ruling class – it's very much a book for our time."

The 2011 awards were subject to some attention from bookmakers, who offered odds of 2/1 for favourite Matthew Hollis' biography Now All Roads Lead To France and odds of 3/1 for Miller's Pure.