A strange but compelling novel which won the
Costa prize.
It’s set in 1785, just before the French
Revolution. A young engineer, Jean-Baptiste Baratte, is given the job of
demolishing Les Innocents, a stinking, leaking cemetery in Paris. He’s
attacked, he falls in love, there’s a rape, a murder and suicide – all stemming
out of the corruption of Les Innocents.
The cemetery is of course a metaphor for Paris
and pre-revolutionary France in general – decaying and about to face momentous
change, wanting to hang on to the past and at the same time needing to sweep it
away.
The atmosphere Andrew Miller creates is very dark
and gloomy, but he writes very poetically and you want to keep reading.
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