An Instance of the Fingerpost
The Urth list — 3 messages, 3 voices, 05 Jan 1999
https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1315

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Tony Ellis — 05 Jan 1999, 13:08

A (slightly belated) Happy New Year to everyone on the list. Since
things are a little quiet right now, and since we sometimes recommend
non-Wolfe books likely to be of interest, can I warmly recommend Iain
Pears' "An Instance of the Fingerpost" to you all?

Set in and around Oxford in the year 1660, this is a novel composed of
four first-person narratives. The narrator of each, in the course of
telling his own story, purports to give the true account of a murder at
the University and the events surrounding it. But here's the twist: as
soon as you finish the first narrative and start the next, the first
thing the new narrator tells you is that the last narrator not only
omitted certain crucial events, but grossly lied about others! As the
new account unfolds you find yourself thumbing back again and again to
the previous narrative, suddenly seeing everything in a new light. And
then you finish the second narrative, and the first thing the -next-
narrator tells you is that -both- the previous narrators completely
misrepresented the real events! And so on.

This is no mere historical whodunnit. The -real- twist comes in the
fourth and final narrative, it's stunning, and wild horses won't drag it
out of me. If you're still wondering why Wolfe fans should like this
novel, I'm definitely not explaining it very well. 

Enjoy.

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Michael Straight — 05 Jan 1999, 09:21
  follows, by subject match Tony Ellis

> On Tue, 5 Jan 1999, Tony Ellis wrote:
> A (slightly belated) Happy New Year to everyone on the list. Since
> things are a little quiet right now, and since we sometimes recommend
> non-Wolfe books likely to be of interest, can I warmly recommend Iain
> Pears' "An Instance of the Fingerpost" to you all?
> 
> Set in and around Oxford in the year 1660, this is a novel composed of
> four first-person narratives. The narrator of each, in the course of
> telling his own story, purports to give the true account of a murder at
> the University and the events surrounding it. But here's the twist: as
> soon as you finish the first narrative and start the next, the first
> thing the new narrator tells you is that the last narrator not only
> omitted certain crucial events, but grossly lied about others! As the
> new account unfolds you find yourself thumbing back again and again to
> the previous narrative, suddenly seeing everything in a new light. And
> then you finish the second narrative, and the first thing the -next-
> narrator tells you is that -both- the previous narrators completely
> misrepresented the real events! And so on.

This sounds like it was inspired by a novel from the mid 1800's by Wilkie
Collins called _The Moonstone_, which T.S. Eliot called "the first and
greatest of English detective novels" (it introduced the idea of giving
the reader all the clues necessary to solve the mystery and of having a
"detective" to put it all together).  It features chapters written by
each of the witnesses to the crime.  I don't know if they contradict each
other, as, alas, I haven't read it yet. 

You can find it here, among other places on the net:
http://www.bibliomania.com/Fiction/collins/Moonstone/index.html

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Stephen Witowski — 05 Jan 1999, 15:25
  follows, by subject match Michael Straight

Michael Straight wrote :

> This sounds like it was inspired by a novel from the mid 1800's by Wilkie
> Collins called _The Moonstone_, which T.S. Eliot called "the first and
> greatest of English detective novels" (it introduced the idea of giving
> the reader all the clues necessary to solve the mystery and of having a
> "detective" to put it all together).  It features chapters written by
> each of the witnesses to the crime.  I don't know if they contradict each
> other, as, alas, I haven't read it yet. 

A quick recommendation of _The Moonstone_. I love Wilke Collins' fiction
and perhaps this is the best of his novels, with a wonderful complex plot
and great characters (the detective Sgt. Cuff is great) and a marvelous
sense of place this is of interest to Wolfe fans. As far as I can recall
the Chapters written by various characters do not contradict each other
they move the plot on seamlessly and are only written by divers hands
because some of the narrators are not on hand to describe all of the
events.

Stephen
-----------
Stephen Witkowski
Librarian/Information Officer
City Architect's Library , Manchester. UK.
E-Mail : stephenw at libraries.manchester.gov.uk
Phone : (0161) 234 4357

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