An Instance of the Fingerpost

Name: An Instance of the Fingerpost
Author: Iain Pears

Iain Pears

— 1997 —

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Four narrators tell four versions of a murder in 1660s Oxford.

The record

Time
An eveningA season
698 pages, about 14 hours: the length of 2.2 typical books on the shelf.
Getting in
Walk right inSteep climb
One reader reports the first hundred pages moving slowly, dense with period medical and philosophical detail.
What it gives
Plot and actionIdeas to live by
In 20 reviews from critics and book blogs, 14 credit the plot and 12 credit the ideas or a change in how they live.
One of a kind
Others do thisNothing else does
Kirkus pairs it with The Name of the Rose, on the shelf at 518 pages, and the Sunday Times with Agatha Christie.

on the structure
“Rashomon meets The Name of the Rose in a triumphant triple-decker”
Kirkus Reviews, 1997
on the scholarship
“The book is a deeply scholarly thriller, but with the learning worn lightly”
Jane Jakeman · The Independent, 1997
on the four retellings
“excursions into the same basic tale could grow wearisome, but Pears’ effort never does”
Richard Bernstein · The New York Times, 1998
on the mystery and history
“this novel combines a well-crafted murder mystery with some deep epistemological and philosophical history”
a Substack review

on Jack Prescott’s section
“reading Jack Prescott’s version of events half heartedly and eventually I just gave up”
a book blog
on the middle narrators
“two, perhaps three, of the four narrators are men hard to like or care about”
Andrew Miller · The New York Times Book Review, 1998
on the length
“It took me 4 weeks to get through, which is probably a record”
a book blog
on the memoir style
“The memoir style and language that so fit the period make for a longer tale”
a book blog