The Cottage Book Shop: "[Pure] is not easily forgotten."

Pure by Andrew Miller is a work of historical fiction that takes place in Paris during the decade prior to the French Revolution. An Everyman from Normandy has managed to get an education and become an engineer. Paris stinks - literally. It is not healthy. Our anti-hero is hired to remove the Cemetery of the Innocents and the adjacent church to improve the air. He is a modern man, and this is just another problem which will yield to rational thought. And so he begins. Along the way we visit Versailles and meet saints and sinners including an organist who plays in silence, the benevolent Dr. Guillotine, an ancient sexton and his granddaughter, and among others, a bourgeois family who lives adjacent to the cemetery and harbors a murderer within it. (Penguin, 2012. pap $15) ~Betty Ducker, who gave Barbara this book to read while visiting in Pasadena and Barbara then talked her into writing a review. Jill and Barbara both recommend the book. Albeit strange, it stays with you and is not easily forgotten..

-Barbara Siepker