He mixes all these into 1, pages and creates a bestseller. Ken Follett has entered into a dark pact. To be fair, Fall of Giants does not aspire to be great, National Book Award-contending literary fiction. There isn't a very high bar for this kind of book. Johnson appear as Dostoyevsky. Instead, there are at least 2, more pages of inanities to come.
The historical realities dictate everything that happens in this novel. You will find more drama, however, on any Wikipedia page. He certainly is. As the excerpt up top shows, he wants us to know that this big book is important. It would be a stretch to call these characters archetypes. There is no wit, warmth, or ingenuity to be found. The only surprise is that Follett does exactly what you expect him to, every single time.
Against suffrage. Sleeping with his maid. But this is Follett. He does it. And if you also surmised that this German man will be suspiciously anti-imperial no spiked helmet or pointy mustache here!
Or what about the Williams family? It is the extent of the use of any idioms, really. Every character, whether English or Welsh or Russian or American or German speaks in the exact same way: unconvincingly. That is, they converse in robotic monotones meant to deliver historical exposition to keep us moving down the timeline toward the sequel. There is never a moment when two characters share original thoughts, insights, or profundities.
I found no evidence, on the basis of the many interactions and conversations that occur, that anyone in this novel is a human being. Take, for instance, an exchange between Gus and Rosa. Gus works for President Wilson. He also has a big head. Rosa has one eye. And perhaps some future president will want your help. Sometimes she had an unrealistically high opinion of him. I hope I can carry on covering the White House.
God forbid, indeed. In Pillars of the Earth and World Without End , Follett demonstrated his inability to create memorable personages or write convincing dialogue.
Yet he also did a marvelous job cramming period-specific detail into the story. Nothing like that level of detail is present here. Instead, famous events are often passed off in the form of exposition. Towards the end of the novel, there is a nice little scene showing rampant inflation in postwar Germany. This small, intimate, anecdotal moment, shows Follett at his best, working his research into his larger story.
Historical fiction gives you the chance to breathe new life into actual people. Follett decides to ignore this opportunity completely. Despite walk-on roles by dozens of famous people, none of them is given even the hint of a spark. I'm not asking for something along the lines of Tolstoy's creative realization of Napoleon.
But you have to do more than simply mention Sir Edward Grey's name and expect me to swoon at the verisimilitude. His earlier work Eye of the Needle , Night Over Water showed him to be a precise plotter of containable dramas. I compare it to a movie director like Kevin Smith director of small budget, dialogue-centric films directing a big action movie. His battle scenes are silly and empty and fake. His big Russian Revolution moments are a confusing mess. I used to be able to count on Follett to prepare three or four euphemism-free adult encounters that would leave me searching for a bottle of wine and a pack of cigs.
Not here. As Follett has reached his widest audiences yet, he seems to have toned down his erotic impulses. All we get is a handjob during an opera. Perhaps the only interesting thing about this novel is its unusual political undercurrents. Generally, I think most people still hew to the Germans-were-the-aggressors-and-the-Allies-were-the-heroes line of World War I. Follett takes a different tact, lingering on Great Britain's questionable decision to enter the war.
This is not a political hot-take. Rather, it would have been interesting in a more lively, well-written, coherent novel. This has been a rather negative review, so I will say two nice things: First, I appreciate that Follett always tries to find actual roles for his women. They are just as poorly-realized and one-dimensional half-dimensional? I think they are horrible in every objective, measurable way.
Despite this, they are also fun to read. To me, the horribleness is even a bit endearing. EDIT: It has been many years, dear reader, and time has flowed on down the river. It now occurs to me that there is every possibility that I am missing the sequel. Life is just too short to read huge novels due solely to their unintentional hilarity.
View all 22 comments. Sep 14, Melissa Rochelle rated it really liked it Shelves: historical-fiction. One of the early reviews I read stated that this book lacked one of Follett's infamous villains.
I disagree. The ultimate villain in this enormous book is clearly war and perhaps the arrogance of world leaders. I've always had a difficult time understanding the why surrounding World War 1 and this book helps put it in perspective even if it is fiction.
I remember learning in history class that the US got involved because the Germans torpedoed the Lusitania. And it did play a part, but that hap One of the early reviews I read stated that this book lacked one of Follett's infamous villains.
Obviously, WW1 was fought because a bunch of arrogant world leaders didn't want to look weak. Looking back, they all look like spineless jerks that killed millions of people because they wanted to "rule the world". By destroying the German economic system after all the fighting was done, they helped Hitler gain power and kill millions more in WW2. Way to go earlyth century world leaders I really enjoyed this book and think it's worth it for everyone to read!
While the beginning was a little slow primarily because of all the character introduction required , it picked up speed and was difficult to put down despite how heavy it was! If you liked this, try John Jakes' North and South trilogy. Review of Book 2: Winter of the World View all 33 comments. Aug 25, Dana Ilie rated it it was amazing Shelves: historical-fiction. A sweeping epic with the pace of a thriller, I could scarcely put it down. This ambitious novel, the first of a projected trilogy covering most of the 20th century, tells the story of five interrelated families—American, German, Russian, English and Welsh—as they negotiate the tremendous events of the First World War and the Russian Revolution.
Through the various characters—and there are quite a few—we witness the First World War in the trenches and in the halls of government, from each side of A sweeping epic with the pace of a thriller, I could scarcely put it down.
Through the various characters—and there are quite a few—we witness the First World War in the trenches and in the halls of government, from each side of the conflict. It is a period of intense change, a time when giants, be they royalty, tradition, or whole nations, are destined to fall. Barely rumbling at first, the tempo quickens until it breaks in a crescendo of world-changing events. These are people we care about. We feel the plight of an unwed mother trying to survive in a society that affords her few rights and little help.
Although personalized through the lives of these and others, the history is not trivialized. This period is described accurately — even one well versed in history may pick up something new — yet it manages to be superbly entertaining as well. This excellent work is destined to be a classic, and holds great promise for the following two novels. View all 27 comments.
Do not say that I don't like historical fiction - because I do. Do not even say I don't like Follett - because I rather do. In fact, this highly praised - and very thick - volume I'd been anticipating eagerly, both because I had pleasant memories from The Pillars of the Earth and because currently I am rather WWI mad; I read Tuchman's classic works, Maddox Ford, not to mention Hemingway and Remarque, because I am fascinated by the subject.
So what in the world went wrong with this book? This story Do not say that I don't like historical fiction - because I do. This story, which is, like many Folletts, incredibly wide in scope and encompasses a decade, about fifty characters, and several countries, described the beginning of the 20th century, with a special focus, so the book blurb claims, on WWI.
It begins with a prologue in though the main thrust of the book occurs in and ends with an epilogue in The title, Fall of Giants is rather deceptive; one may think it refers to the fall of empires which was brought about chiefly by WWI, but in fact it refers to the fall of aristocracies. Here begin our issues. While the historical research that went into this book is clearly good - though with occasional snags and eyebrow-raising issues - the lens through which it was painted is speculative and political.
Follett chooses to view everything - women's suffrage, personal relations, random little quarrels, and especially the World War - as one big struggle of the 'workingman' and the 'people' against their oppressors, the upper classes.
Commence problems. For one, you simply cannot simplify an entire era to class struggle. Clearly, it played a significant role in the politics and life of the period, but there is a good chance that WWI actually was not an issue of class struggle.
It had its own set of complex and unpleasant reasons, and some of them were class-related, while the majority was not. Secondly, at the beginning of the 20th century especially, one cannot write the class differences in the same way one does in the 11th century or whenever it was that The Pillars of the Earth was set.
Relationships changed, notions changed actually improved somewhat , and it becomes that much more difficult to present upper class people as the villains, as ones assuming they are 'born to command' or, and this bothered me especially, as uniformly stupid. The book came out with gems like "all the officers were idiots, all the sergeants were smart" or something in that vein. Sergeants being working class, while officers, of course, belonged to the upper classes. There is definitely everything in the world to be said for merit, but the notion that in a huge, conscripted army, officers as a whole had not a scrap of talent among them is almost a statistical impossibility.
The problem is not the mere presentation of the facts; it is well-known that they were not much better than Follett presents, and in some ways even worse - though generally the guilty parties were not so much the nobility, anymore, as the great industrialists.
The problem is that he shoves everything and every situation into the same tired framework, presents even quarrels of ideology in the light of 'if two women from different classes fight, the upper-class arrogance must be at fault', and has some serious trouble determining who 'people' are. For instance, in the description of the Russian revolution, he seems to neatly forget that the middle classes are as much 'people' as the factory workers are. The same is true for certain situations in England.
The double standard the author applies tends to show in intelligence, awareness, common sense, Now there's a pretty reverse prejudice for you; people of the working classes universally seem to possess more common sense and presence of mind in the 'real world' than their airy, upper class counterparts.
This propensity is so universal, it practically smacks of stereotyping. After pages, it tires one quickly. If the novel's only problem were excessive political correctness - expressed also in the descriptions of the war itself - I would chalk it up to modern sensibilities, misplaced, perhaps, but generally laudable. Though it still irritates me, I should not criticize the novel so severely as, meant for the popular reader, it seems that the historical writer almost feels obliged, today, to prop up the wretched of this world.
Unfortunately, these are not its own detriments. The author, once again in a nod to popular, modern literature, makes much of passionate love, ascension from the 'everyman' and the superiority of that same 'everyman'. All topics which are the permeating slogans of the present day but whose actual validity is dubious. It's astonishing how many of his positive characters somehow wind up in key political roles.
Two siblings from the same family, not to mention some three or four others. The coincidences that are created to somehow bring these characters to the top walks of life are not particularly inspired, nor endearing.
The writing itself, though, was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. A well-written book should be able to cover up for its flaws with the language it uses; this one, sadly, only emphasized them. The problem appears to be twofold; the author writes a shopping-list, rather than a story. He came. He sat down. Also, the transitions, sometimes within the same paragraph itself, sometimes between paragraphs, are fantastically awkward. We may well have the sentence "He picked up the glass.
The war was beginning. He put the glass down. The second problem with the writing is that it is staggeringly, unabashedly didactic. Follett clearly writes for an audience which he supposes to be clueless, and makes no effort at all to conceal the history and sociology lessons he is giving.
That also makes the dialogue sound awful, along the lines of: "You know, of course, that H. Asquith, the current prime minister Nobody in their right mind. His speech writing is tortuous in exactly the opposite way of Ford Madox Ford's elliptical ambiguity, and murder one's sense of reality in almost the same way. I wish this were a better book, because I wanted very much a good book that deals with WWI.
I wish this were the wide-scope, sweeping, thrilling epic it's supposed to be, because there is nothing more enjoyable than an epic that leaves you breathless, gulping it down, wanting more.
Something like M. Kay's Far Pavilions, without the colonialism. I wish it were all of these things, but it really isn't.
It's a book far too long for its own good on the one hand, and not nearly long or detailed enough on the other. The author gulped down so much time and space, he literally has no time or room to descent to descriptions much. It's a didactic, preachy, fantastically un-nuanced piece of writing, which suffers from laundry0list qualities, and apparently did not go through the capable hands of an editor.
View all 76 comments. Jul 30, Matt rated it it was amazing Shelves: audiobook , favourites. After being highly impressed with the Pillars series created by Follett, I hoped to find as much depth and development in the Century Trilogy.
The premise, following the fates of five interrelated families against a backdrop of world events is brilliant in its imagining and stellar in its delivery. The reader is introduced to Billy Williams early in the novel, as he enters the Welsh mining pits. His family acts as a wonderful bridge as Billy's sister, Ethel, a housekeeper for the aristocratic Fit After being highly impressed with the Pillars series created by Follett, I hoped to find as much depth and development in the Century Trilogy.
His family acts as a wonderful bridge as Billy's sister, Ethel, a housekeeper for the aristocratic Fitzherberts, takes a fateful step outside her accepted caste. Lady Maud Fitzherbert herself crosses deep into forbidden territory, bridging the story into another family, when she falls in love with Walter von Ulrich, a German living in London while tensions mount and the Great War is imminent. Filling out the cast of characters is Gus Dewar, an American law student who begins new career in Woodrow Wilson's White House, and two Russian brothers, Grigori and Lev Peshkov, who seek the freedoms that America alone can offer them.
Follett lays the early foundations of a very powerful and deeply intertwined novel sure to grow as history progresses, putting families, nationalities, and alliances to the test throughout. The historical arc of the novel, , covers a great deal and touches on some very important events.
With the rise of the Great War developing throughout the early part of the novel, the reader is pulled in to view things from all sides. Additionally, the snapshot of Russia shows the discontent seen in the streets and the eventual rise of revolutionary sentiment. Underlying these political changes, discussion about universal suffrage cannot be ignored or discounted as important both within Europe and North America. Follett captures these threads and spins them inside the larger character development seen throughout the novel.
It only adds to the greatness and intricate detail of this novel. This was my second reading of this novel, the first coming soon after its release. I felt that once the trilogy was done, I ought to take the time to read all three and see, with no interruptions, how the series grows and its characters develop.
Fans of the Edward Rutherfurd multi-generational sagas will surely fall in love with this book, as will those who loved the nuanced character development of Jeffrey Archer who is currently penning his own multi-generational series. Follett has bitten off much in this trilogy, but has shown his ability to keep all his characters under control and following a decisive path.
He captures the reader's attention and allows them to choose a favourite storyline, knowing full well that it may merge with another before the novel is done. I cannot wait to see how things develop as families intermingle and offspring hold alliances that may and will clash. Stellar work and I am so glad I came back to this for its full effect. Kudos, Mr. Follett for this wonderful opening novel in the series.
You have my rapt attention. View all 31 comments. Mar 24, R. Gold rated it it was amazing. So addictive! I am posting a review on YouTube. My review is entirely character-based, because the plot is just World War I. If you enjoy multi generational family sagas this trilogy is a must read.
It has a healthy batch of heroes and assholes that make your skin crawl. View all 8 comments. Jun 22, Beata rated it really liked it. Enjoyed the way historic events are intertwined with the fate of five families of different walks of life and nationalities. Ken Follett manages to tell a story and include details describing the end of the Edwardian era, the dawn of the Russian empire and the Prussian military ambitions.
This is an epic tale that equally focuses on Welsh miners or Russian workers and on the aristocrats. The fourth star is for keeping me interested. View all 30 comments. Jun 10, Graeme rated it did not like it. The story was enjoyable enough and certainly kept me entertained for a couple of days.
The recreation of the early 20th Century was very vivid, and I was impressed by how well Follett applied his considerable skills in this respect to a variety of nations and social classes. To cover so many years in any decent amount of depth was a great challenge, to which Follett rises well. The story was fast-paced and the build-up to the War was particularly well managed.
The particularly notable aspect of The story was enjoyable enough and certainly kept me entertained for a couple of days. The particularly notable aspect of Follett's storytelling is that he manages to weave together a great many themes in one fluid story: the First World War; political reform in Britain; social upheaval in Russia and the development of the United States as a significant world power. This was well executed and allowed a free-floing narrative to become established.
Given that long periods of time could elapse between two appearances of each character, anticipation builds significantly over the course of the story and it is interesting to see how each character's situation has developed over days, months or even years. Nevertheless, there are some problems with the book, mainly in characterisation and in the relations between the characters in the story. Rather than allow the characters to be merely players on a bigger stage, Follett insists on engineering direct connections between them, no matter how unlikely the circumstances.
Many of the meetings and sightings between characters, particularly during the War, are highly contrived. For instance not once, but twice, two characters, one German, one English, are posted directly opposite each other in the trenches: convenient, given that they are old school friends.
While this did allow a reunion over the Truce of Christmas , enabling Follett to detail this interesting occurrence and add some emotional depth to the section, the second time it happens seems rather less well considered and seems to stretch the boundaries of belief. In another instance, the same German is noticed by an American soldier who believes he 'may have known him before the War'. Again, the sighting seems somewhat heavily contrived and does not add much in the way of emotion or character development.
There are many occurrences like this within the book, and the more there are, the less easy they are to accept. It is a shame, as this does somewhat derail the narrative and as a result I could never quite find myself immersed in the story. One can't help but feel that the narrative my have been served better if Follett had not deliberately created links between so many characters, rather allowing more to progress through the story unnoticed by the others. Characterisation did also become a problem.
For example, Earl Fitzherbert begins the story as very much a product of his time: a Conservative peer with a revulsion towards reform. However, he is not an unplesant person and, despite his infidelities, generally comes across reasonably well.
When he reaches the War his natural gallantry and sense of honour come to the fore when he is forced to battle against the wills of stubborn senior officers in order to persuade the BEF to put up stauncher resistance against the Germans. Unfortunately, after this he becomes rather more of a charicature, almost becoming a pantomime villain towards the end. He becomes the typical 'donkey' officer, so beloved of mainstream history and so clear in the modern public imagination.
Indeed, this is a problem with the recreation of the War throughout the book. Follett's is a modern, mainstream interpretation, mainly based on the thoughts of anti-war poets from the trenches and is firmly rooted modern perceptions. Much recent history on the period has demonstrated the gallantry of officers, as well as the numerous new tactics implemented by British high command in order to win the War: Follett prefers to rely on the popular imagining of waves of brave privates and NCOs being thrown repeatedly against barbed wire and machine guns while the officers sat safe in the dugouts.
Such interpretations are not true. By the end of the War, the same officers, notably the much-maligned Douglas Haig, had turned a loose bunch of several million conscripts and volunteers into an extremely efficient military machine: no mean feat when one considers that the pre-War British army was only around , men at its height.
Even during the peak of the Peninsular War and Waterloo campaign the army only reached the dizzying heights of , men.
Moreover, Follett seems to create an anti-war feeling throughout the lower classes, with only the upper classes in all the countries in the book showing support for the War. This is certainly untrue and there is plenty of poetry from front-line troops who enjoyed their War and believed wholeheartedly in their purpose.
I don't deny that there was anti-war feeling, but I do feel that Follett's interpretation is somewhat misleading in suggesting how widespread it was. The novel also seems to suggest that German support for the War extended no further than the upper classes and the diplomatic service: this is, again, disingenuous. So in my opinion, the research is impeccable.
Dave: One thing I enjoyed about this book was the way the story portrayed the changes in the world during this time. He has rich European aristocrats, middle to upper class Americans, poor English miners, poor working class Russians, and middle class Europeans. And much of this change happened during and after World War I. Dave: Absolutely. Dave: For me personally, I found the middle of the book which focused on World War I to be the most interesting because of the strategies of the war.
I found it especially interesting that the separation of the classes was evident even in the military. Nate: Yeah, all of the majors and lieutenants were aristocrats — many of whom had no real military experience, and all of the privates and those on the front lines were the workers and miners back home.
Class divisions were evident on the battlefield, just as they were everywhere else. English student Lloyd Williams discovers in the crucible of the Spanish Civil War that he must fight Communism just as hard as Fascism.
Daisy Peshkov, a driven social climber, cares only for popularity and the fast set until war transforms her life, while her cousin Volodya carves out a position in Soviet intelligence that will affect not only this war but also the war to come.
Fall of Giants. A housekeeper for the aristocratic Fitzherberts takes a fateful step above her station, while Lady Maud Fitzherbert herself crosses deep into forbidden territory when she falls in love with a German spy.
And two orphaned Russian brothers embark on radically different paths when their plan to emigrate to America falls afoul of war, conscription, and revolution. From the dirt and danger of a coal mine to the glittering chandeliers of a palace, from the corridors of power to the bedrooms of the mighty, Fall of Giants takes us into the inextricably entangled fates of five families—and into a century that we thought we knew, but that now will never seem the same again.
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