Anisha Inkspill's Reviews > Pure

Set in Paris before the start of the French Revolution, the description made the scenes come to life from page 1. Jean-Baptiste Baratte, an engineer, is set the task to clean a Parisian town reeking with death. Nearby towns have been complaining of the stench; a cemetery, les Innocents, has 50 000 corpses dumped from a plague. Not an easy job but one he accepts from a minister of the King.
I left this book to the end expecting to struggle with it, this is my second attempt the first time (years ago) I didn’t get far. This time I was enthralled by Barrete’s inner battle to not be pulled to the darker side. This battle is almost subdued (and easy to miss) but to me it spoke loudly as it was a tense read and I was hooked to the end wondering what would happen.

I was also delighted by the coincidence of touching on the subject of Enlightenment, one I would have missed if I had not started to look into Romanticism that led me to articles that I skimmed gleaning enough to recognise the deeper textures of the ritual Barrette goes through every night before he falls asleep.

… He shuts his eyes – darkness either side! – and after a pause begins to speak quietly not a prayer but a catechism of selfhood.
“Who are you? I am Jean Baptiste Barrette. Where are you from? From Belleme in Normandy. What are you? An engineer, trained at the Ecole des Ponts. What do you believe in? In the power of reason … ”

Kindle edition, page 29

Without this vague understanding it would have been easy for me to think not much really happened instead of being submerged in the subtle conflict. I zipped through this faster than I thought I would. The ending, kind of open I thought just fitted the tone of this novel perfectly.