The four parts of the novel are preceded by Epigraphs taken from Francis Bacon's Novum Organum. The first three quotations describe three of Bacon's four Idols of the mind. The fourth quotation is the source of the title. The quotation is much abbreviated, with no ellipses showing the omissions. The full text (using a slightly different translation of the book) is as follows: Their actions are ignoble and even ugly, and while Pears makes a good show of them justifying themselves -- Prescott helped by obviously also being, in increasing part, delusional -- the tone still feels a bit off here too often. There's also the contest between Grove and another Oxford man, Thomas Ken, for a parish -- the only available such opening, at the time -- which Thomas is desperate to be named to (and which, of course, gives him good motive to see that Grove is in no position to get it ...). to an uncertain throne. It is a time of sects, witch hunts and conspiracies. It is also the dawn of the Enlightenment.

young daughter of a civil war radical and the book's most notable victim. Her story -- that of an unprotected woman assailed by the forces of misogyny and Realpolitik -- is the book's emotional core. It is Sarah Blundy who saves There are many beautiful passages, certainly, but the central aspects of the book would have been better treated in a study of real writers than in this oddly fictionalised form of scholarship. from his father's merchant trading network. Cola is a kind of dilettante physician who soon finds himself in Oxford keeping company with the likes of Boyle, the father of modern chemistry, and Richard Lower, a pioneering doctor The death of Dr. Robert Grove is the focal point for each of the four witness's narrative. Grove is not a likeable character and no one seems to grieve for him after his death. Why does Iain Pears choose such a man's death to be investigated so thoroughly?

has steeped himself in the reading and the attitudes of the period, so that his characters, in their lives and confessions, embody its rich contradictions, its entwining of superstition with the spirit of new learning, of religion with phenomena, the Low Countries and England were no longer to be disdained. After many months in his care, I caught his enthusiasm and, having little to detain me in Padua, requested permission to tour that part of the world. Kind man that The term "fingerpost" is also an obscure synonym for prelate or priest, foreshadowing one of the book's main plot points. [3] The murder of Dr. Robert Grove -- an Oxford Fellow, and an historical figure (as are quite a few of the characters in the novel) -- is the central plot point, though the story ranges far beyond that. An Instance of the Fingerpost is a literary mystery in the tradition of Eco’s The Name of the Rose, making use of historical figures and events to frame its fictional story. Like Eco’s acclaimed novel, the book uses the form of the murder mystery to approach larger issues. The mystery of Robert Grove’s death provides Iain Pears with a device for exploring the events surrounding the return of the monarchy to power following the fall of Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate and the byzantine structure of political life during the Restoration. The story’s skillful intermingling of fictional and historical characters and events gives the book a striking verisimilitude, even as its use of multiple narrators examines the subjective nature of personal histories and the difficulty in ascertaining an objective historical truth. Pears’s vivid re-creation of the complex world of England under Charles II shows painstaking research into not only the physical details of seventeenth century life but its ideas and attitudes as well. The Restoration was a period of upheaval both politically and scientifically, and Pears’s choice of widely differing narrators allows him to present a broad spectrum of subjects and experiences. In so doing, he captures the inherent drama of a period in which extraordinary changes were altering the lives of ordinary people caught up in the sweep of history.

A contrast portrayed in the novel is, on one hand, a philosophy based on ancient and medieval learning, and, on the other, the scientific method that was beginning to be applied in physics, chemistry and medicine. The use of so many real figures is also occasionally problematic -- well handled, in part, but also feeling occasionally too name-dropping, as with the (limited) use of Robert Boyle. At the heart of An Instance of the Fingerpost is the question of how we ascertain the truth, and the problems inherent in trusting any individual account of events one has not witnessed. Pears draws on the writings of Francis Bacon for his chapter introductions, examining in each of the book’s sections a different way in which those seeking the truth may be misled. Indeed, Pears’s titles offer the reader a hint as to the nature of the deception or misdirection that is about to unfold, a fact that becomes apparent only when a fuller picture of each narrator has emerged. With the book’s final section, Pears offers for the first time a full and accurate recounting of the physical events of the story, then adds an ultimately unknowable spiritual dimension that each reader must either take on faith or reject. It is a daringly open-ended and enigmatic conclusion to an engrossing, thought-provoking novel. My Lord Bacon, in his 'Novum Organus,' discusses this point, and investigates with his habitual brilliance the various categories of evidence, and finds them all flawed," says the only one of Pears' narrators He had shrewdly recognized from afar that the return of King Charles II meant that vast profits would once again be there for the taking and, stealing a march on more timid traders, he established himself in London to provide the wealthier

READERS GUIDE

Cola also makes the acquaintance of a desperate, willful, and impoverished -- but very attractive -- Sarah Blundy, whose mother is ill; when none of the local doctors are willing to help, Cola, who has had some medical training, steps in.