A fascinating book but I found it a slow read as the style reflects the period. I can not call it gripping and the murder mystery is not the prime interest, but I liked how the various narrators each interpreted, and reported, the facts from their own point of view. Even the final and most complete version is influenced by the narrator's feelings. One of the pleasures of reading (Fingerpost) is the opportunity it affords to become a kind of amateur expert on daily life in Restoration England. Rosina wrote: "Thom wrote: "Interestingly I never cared for the various series based on his books. I'd watch a few episodes and that was it. Talented as he may have been, I doubt he's a good one for me."

An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears | Waterstones

If you liked Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, you should run to buy Iain Pears’s lavishly erudite historical mystery.”— The New York TimesWas not Hypatia the greatest philosopher of Alexandria, and a true martyr to the old values of learning? She was torn to pieces by a mob of incensed Christians not because she was a woman, but because her learning was so profound, her skills at dialectic so extensive that she reduced all who queried her to embarrassed silence. They could not argue with her, so they murdered her.” Purkiss, J. (2005). Reclaiming our Rural Highways. Dorchester: Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty Partnership. More recently, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California has installed LED fingerposts which orient themselves to planets, missions, and exoplanets using data supplied by the Deep Space Network. [11] Rosina wrote: "Each of the four narrators has a different mystery, and the killing of Dr Grove is perhaps the least absorbing, though I found the testing of the poison by Stahl - the early forensic science - most..." 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?

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Along with the new areas of philosophy, which includes the budding knowledge of medicine, alchemy and belief in witchcraft still exist. It's a veritable stew of contrary beliefs and mistrust. Add to that a death that may or may not have been suspicious, apparent witnesses who may or may not have seen anything, and multiple reporters on the event who give us their views on what happened. Dr. Robert Grove (is found dead) suddenly poisoned in his chambers. Who did it? And, more important, why? I was actually about to say something about the ending but I won’t. I would have considered it a spoiler, however vague it would have been. But I kept in mind who these men were, so I was more than satisfied with it. Jaeger, Paige (February–March 2023). "From Fingerposts to GPS". New York State Conservationist. Albany, New York: New York State Department of Environmental Conservation . Retrieved 13 September 2023.

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II. Централно място в сюжета заема загадката около убийство в Оксфорд, к��ято е разказана от 4 различни гледни точки, но същевременно се усеща духът на епохата, както и има философски размисли. Отделните персонажи, представящи своята версия за събитията, са все интересни личности, като на моменти си противоречат един на друг, което прави „Пръстът, който те сочи“ доста вълнуващо четиво. Книгата не успя да ме заплени чак колкото страхотната „Аркадия“ на Пиърс, но определено ми направи добро впечатление!

An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears: 9781573227957 An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears: 9781573227957

There is a murder and there is a dispossessed heir. Frankly, I couldn’t give a stuff if some shouldabeen rich young sprog got hornswoggled in the 17th century, I mean, the goodly realm of Great Britain had just been through 20 years of civil war and there was an awful lot of horns swoggled, of that you can be sure. I’d say more horns were swoggled than not swoggled. Vast estates yanked from under the noses of their rightful heirs and all of that. Who cares. One of the pleasures of reading ''An Instance of the Fingerpost'' is the opportunity it affords to become a kind of amateur expert on daily life in Restoration England. And it is not just the physical world that is resurrected. Pears Among Prerogative Instances I will put in the fourteenth place Instances of the Fingerpost, borrowing the term from the fingerposts which are set up where roads part, to indicate the several directions. These I also call Decisive and Judicial, and in some cases, Oracular and Commanding Instances. I explain them thus. When in the investigation of any nature the understanding is so balanced as to be uncertain to which of two or more natures the cause of the nature in question should be assigned on account of the frequent and ordinary concurrence of many natures, instances of the fingerpost show the union of one of the natures with the nature in question to be sure and indissoluble, of the other to be varied and separable; and thus the question is decided, and the former nature is admitted as the cause, while the latter is dismissed and rejected. Such instances afford very great light and are of high authority, the course of interpretation sometimes ending in them and being completed. Sometimes these instances of the fingerpost meet us accidentally among those already noticed, but for the most part they are new, and are expressly and designedly sought for and applied, and discovered only by earnest and active diligence. The term "fingerpost" is also an obscure synonym for prelate or priest, foreshadowing one of the book's main plot points. [3]

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Born in 1955, Iain Pears has worked as an art historian, a television consultant, and a journalist, in England, France, Italy, and the United States. He is the author of six highly praised detective novels, a book of art history, and countless articles on artistic, financial, and historical subjects. He lives in Oxford, England. politics, of politics with violence. Here we glimpse the world through 17th-century eyes and through the medium of a language that is, for the most part, a convincing equivalent of 17th-century English. I have been spared riches and fame and power and position, just as His goodness has saved me from poverty and great illness.” Anthony Wood

An Instance of the Fingerpost - AbeBooks An Instance of the Fingerpost - AbeBooks

Roman Clodia wrote: "Yes, seems to be a Marmite book as I'm the same as Jill on this one, and also struggled with Pears' The Portrait. Iain Pears is a Coventry-born and Oxford-educated art historian and author of historical mysteries, and An Instance of the Fingerpost is his most famous novel. Good historians are not necessarily good authors and good authors are not necessarily good historians, but in Fingerpost Pears manages to strike a comfortable balance between both professions. Historical fiction tends to gather around the Tudors and Victorians but often skirts the Stuarts. They had an awful lot of messy Civil Wars and their personalities were not what one would call attractive. Unlike writers attempting valiantly to fashion together something new from the fall of Anne Boleyn or similar, An Instance of the Fingerpost offers fresh material even for the hardened historical fiction fiend such as myself. However, even without the refreshing setting and context, Pears' novel marks itself as head and shoulders above the average. No single story provides the frame for the others, and we jump between historical moments every other paragraph. There's a lot of movement, but very little progression. The breathless thrills of An Instance of the Fingerpost have been exchanged for a lengthy meditation on cultural history, with characters as pegs for thoughts. The plot has more in common with an academic treatise than with a thriller. In fact, there are more exciting PhD theses. I began Arcadia – a novel conceived and written for an app – over four and a half years ago when a lot of people were musing about digital narrative. After working my way through three publishers, two designers, four sets of coders and a lot of anguish, I am no longer surprised that few others have done anything about it. I also understand why the NHS database could go five times over budget and not work. What should be a simple task – write story, create software, publish – turns out to be anything but in practice.I thought both books are crafted thoughtfully - the monologue form in Portrait, and the well-integrated historical research here ranging from medicine to Restoration politics and religion - but I felt bogged down in all the minutiae and dead ends.