Pure - by Andrew Miller (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

The clearing of a cemetery stokes the fires of revolution in eighteenth-century France in this Costa Prize-winning "novel of ideas disguised as a ghost story" (The New York Times).

Paris, 1785. An ambitious young engineer, Jean-Baptiste Baratte arrives in Paris charged with emptying the overflowing cemetery of Les Innocents, an ancient site whose stench is poisoning the neighborhood's air and water. A self-styled modern man of reason, Baratte sees his work as a chance to clear away the burden of history. But he soon suspects that the destruction of the cemetery might be a prelude to his own fate--and the demise of the social order. As unrest against the court of Louis XVI mounts, the engineer realizes that the future he had planned may no longer be the one he wants. His assignment sets him on a path of discovery and desire, as well as relentless labor, assault, and sudden death.

"Pure is a compelling, timely novel--with its throb of revolution, of ordinary people arising in anger--a narrative that takes death as its subject yet races with life."--The Guardian

Review Quotes

"Some stories are too wonderful-too filled with wonders-to set in the present. They can't really be called historical fiction because they don't serve history so much as plunder it to invent what might have been. Such is the case with Pure."
--The New York Times Book Review

"This smart reimagining of the groundwork just before France burst into flames is something to savor."
--The Washington Post

"Andrew Miller...is another Hilary Mantel. Pure [is] elegantly written and intricately constructed, with an ending that, like those mirrors at Versailles, cleverly reflects the beginning."
--The New York Times

"Such is a wonder of good fiction, when a topic and a tale of which we are ignorant can-through simple ink symbols on paper-acquire an urgency that casts the rest of our daily rounds in shadow."
--Cleveland Plain Dealer

"One of the most brilliant aspects of Miller's writing is his ability to question unobtrusively, through style alone, sentimentality about both life under the Bourbons and the creative destruction of revolution...he has an instinctive knack for casting bright similes, never overextended, that ripple suggestively...The writing throughout is crystalline, uncontrived, striking and intelligent. You could call it pure."
--Jonathan Beckman, Literary Review

"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. PURE is one ... Miller's newly minted sentences are arresting, often unsettling and always thought-provoking. Exquisite inside and out, 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."
--The Telegraph

"Quietly powerful, consistently surprising, Pure is a fine addition to substantial body of work...pre-revolutionary Paris is evoked in pungent detail...By concentrating on the bit players and byways of history, Miller conjures up an eerily tangible vanished world."
--Suzi Feay, Financial Times

"Murder, rape, seduction and madness impel this elegant novel...Within this physical and political decay, Miller couches the heart of the matter: how to live one's life with personal integrity, with a purity not so much morally unblemished as unalloyed with the fads and opinions of society...Miller populates Baratte's quest for equanimity with lush and tart characters, seductively fleshed out, who collectively help to deliver the bittersweet resolution of his professional and personal travails."
--James Urquhart, Independent

"Very atmospheric...Although the theme may sound macabre, 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. Above all he brings off that difficult trick of making the reader care about an unsymapthetic character. If you enjoyed Patrick Suskind's Perfume, you'll love this."
--Daily Express

"It is an audacious novelist who can so knowingly prefigure the symbolism at the heart of his own work without threatening the success of the entire enterprise. It is fortunate, then, that Miller is a writer of subtlety and skill...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. He is also a very humane writer, whose philosophy is tempered always with an understanding of the flaws and failings of ordinary people...Pure defies the ordinary conventions of storytelling, slipping dream-like between lucidity and a kind of abstracted elusiveness... As Miller proves with this dazzling novel, it is not certainty we need but courage."
--Clare Clark, Guardian

"Almost dreamlike, a realistic fantasy, a violent fairytale for adults."
--Brian Lynch, Irish Times

"Enthralling...superbly researched, brilliantly narrated and movingly resolved."
--Robert McCrum, The Observer

About the Author