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| Pure by Andrew Miller |
Pure. What a not so
sweet smelling little charmer you are. A real treasure that I am
pleased to have finally read after a couple years of some less than
graceful, evasive manoeuvres. It has played a good game this Pure.
Putting itself under my nose at every turn. Gawping at me from the
shelf at my library as I reach for a different book. On a friends
currently reading pile. In recommended reading lists. Flashing your
fine cover in blue or in green. You know I love that cover. Have told
you over and over. It has always been one of my favourites. A
favourite of all time.
You are everywhere,
Pure by Andrew Miller, everywhere I look. So, when I saw you
discarded upon the recently returned shelf at my local library, I
knew I could not resist you any longer. I succumbed, overcoming my
apprehension towards your macabre context, and you yielded, giving up
a fortune in charms.
Pure. Was probably not
the book I expected it to be. For the last few years I have been
raving about that exquisitely beautiful cover. Telling people it was
a favourite of all time. And yet I had not read it. Had avoided it.
Been evasive when people had tried to push it on me.
Why then did I resist
for so long? Well, it had more than a little to do with the nature of
the context. The cemetery of les Innocents. Its sides heaving
with rotting bodies. The engineer, Jean-Baptiste. Commissioned
to clear the over burden of death from les Innocents and
transform it into a market place. Does not sound very pleasant does
it?
I always knew I would
get to Pure eventually. As soon as I could convince my senses that
the story within, the story of removing rotting bodies buried one
atop the other for hundreds of years, would not offend them. When
that time came and I felt my resolve was strong, I went for it. And
enjoyed every second.
Yes, the context is
gruesome on occasion and yes, the descriptions of the death scent
clinging to everything that surrounded les Innocents –
clothes, people, food – will perhaps put you off your supper, but
it really isn't so bad. Not as bad as I thought it would be. And if
you can overcome it there is a story of beauty laying beneath that
death mask. A treasure trove of barely restrained sexuality, of books
and literature, of relationships and the human mind.
I don't know how this
author writes his other books, but I believe that Andrew Miller wrote
Pure in a perpetually aroused state. I do not know if others will
pick up on this too. Maybe it was just me. But sexual innuendo was
everywhere in this story. Not busting at your seams sexuality, but a
subtle innuendo. Like a soft breath across your face. Like a length
of silk falling from a bed post. The warm liquid feel of sex had its fingers in every corner. From the obvious Heloise the prostitute, to
the cadavers of two women, to the moments Jean-Baptiste found
himself alone with his hardness, to the girl with her peep hole. It
filled the pages. Tainted the words.
And books. If you are a
bibliophile then you will love the feel of being in a book surrounded
by characters who love books too. Through reading, through education.
Titles of books I would never have heard of. Obscure French titles to
the more well known such as Robinson Crusoe. I am infatuated with the
way Andrew Miller blended the two wonders of sex and books into a
story about the decommissioning of a putrid cemetery.
I was seduced, repulsed
and hypnotised.
- MM
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