The New York Times
…like [Hilary] Mantel, [Miller] writes historical novels that are not just pastiche or painstaking waxworks re-creations, but books that make the past seem oddly contemporary…This inventive and surprising novel is…elegantly written and intricately constructed, with an ending that…cleverly reflects the beginning. And yet for all its neatness, Pure is ultimately a book about impurity, what Baratte comes to recognize as "the world's fabulous dirt." It's an artful, carefully wrought novel that ultimately comes down in favor of mess.
—Charles McGrath
The New York Times Book Review
Some stories are too wonderful—too filled with wonders—to set in the present. They can't really be called historical fiction because they don't serve history so much as plunder it to invent what might have been. Such is the case with Pure, by Andrew Miller, a novel set during the Age of Enlightenment that pays homage not to the dawn of reason but to its witching hour, teeming with all that reason mocks—hobgoblins, specters and whatever else might be lurking in the dark. A novel of ideas disguised as a ghost story, voluptuously atmospheric, Pure exerts a sensual hold over the reader.
—Kathryn Harrison
Publishers Weekly
In another exploration of historical lacunae, Miller (Ingenious Pain) delves into pre-Revolutionary Paris, where a pestilential, ancient cemetery acts as metaphor for the blighted reign of King Louis XVI. Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a young Norman engineer who prides himself on his faculties of reason, is commissioned by the king's minister to close the centuries-old les Innocents cemetery, whose noxious sprawl threatens to poison adjacent neighborhoods. Jean-Baptiste moves in nearby and begins orchestrating the massive exhumation, hiring miners to dig up the thousands of bodies and cart away the bones. Among those whose lives will be changed by his commission are Jean-Baptiste's friend Armand, the organist at les Innocents' church; and Héloïse, a literate prostitute, who becomes his mistress. But as the digging commences, unexpected complications arise: risk of cave-ins, infection, rats, bats, madness, fire, and the special danger posed by his landlords' vengeful daughter, Ziguette. Despite all obstacles, Jean-Baptiste forges on with his ghoulish task, but at what cost to reason? Although the book's dramas fail to coalesce, Miller recreates pre-Revolutionary Paris with astonishing verisimilitude, and through Jean-Baptiste, illuminates the years preceding le deluge. Agent: Zoe Pagnamenta. (July)
From the Publisher
A Best Fiction Book of 2012. "...Miller recreates pre-Revolutionary Paris with astonishing verisimilitude, and through Jean-Baptiste, illuminates the years preceding le deluge." - Publishers Weekly
"...elegantly written and intricately constructed, with an ending that, like those mirrors at Versailles, cleverly reflects the beginning. And yet for all its neatness, "Pure" is ultimately a book about impurity, what Baratte comes to recognize as "the world's fabulous dirt." It's an artful, carefully wrought novel that ultimately comes down in favor of mess." - The New York Times
"One of the most brilliant aspects of Miller's writing is his ability to question unobtrusively, through style alone, sentimentality about both life under the Bourbons and the creative destruction of revolution...he has an instinctive knack for casting bright similes, never overextended, that ripple suggestively...The writing throughout is crystalline, uncontrived, striking and intelligent. You could call it pure." - Literary Review
"Quietly powerful, consistently surprising, Pure is a fine addition to substantial body of work...pre-revolutionary Paris is evoked in pungent detail...By concentrating on the bit players and byways of history, Miller conjures up an eerily tangible vanished world." - Financial Times
"Murder, rape, seduction and madness impel this elegant novel...Within this physical and political decay, Miller couches the heart of the matter: how to live one's life with personal integrity, with a purity not so much morally unblemished as unalloyed with the fads and opinions of society...Miller populates Baratte's quest for equanimity with lush and tart characters, seductively fleshed out, who collectively help to deliver the bittersweet resolution of his professional and personal travails." - The Independent (UK)
"Very atmospheric...Although the theme may sound macabre, Miller's eloquent novel overflows with vitality and colour. It is packed with personal and physical details that evoke 18th-century Paris with startling immediacy. Above all he brings off that difficult trick of making the reader care about an unsymapthetic character. If you enjoyed Patrick Suskind's Perfume, you'll love this." - Daily Express
"It is an audacious novelist who can so knowingly prefigure the symbolism at the heart of his own work without threatening the success of the entire enterprise. It is fortunate, then, that Miller is a writer of subtlety and skill...Unlike many parables, however, Pure is neither laboured nor leaden. Miller writes like a poet, with a deceptive simplicity - his sentences and images are intense distillations, conjuring the fleeting details of existence with clarity. He is also a very humane writer, whose philosophy is tempered always with an understanding of the flaws and failings of ordinary people...Pure defies the ordinary conventions of storytelling, slipping dream-like between lucidity and a kind of abstracted elusiveness... As Miller proves with this dazzling novel, it is not certainty we need but courage." - The Guardian (UK)
"His recreation of pre-Revolutionary Paris is extraordinarily vivid and imaginative, and his story is so gripping that you'll put your life on hold to finish it. Expect this on the Booker longlist, at the very least." - The Times
"This is a tale about 'the beauty and mystery of what is most ordinary'...Miller lingers up close on details: sour breath, decaying objects, pretty clothes, flames, smells, eyelashes...He is also alive to the dramatic possibilities offered by late-18th-century Paris, a fetid and intoxicating city on the brink of revolution...Miller intimately and pacily imagines how it might have felt to witness it." - Daily Telegraph
"...the book pulls off an ambitious project: to evoke a complex historical period through a tissue of deftly selected details." - Sunday Times
"...almost dreamlike, a realistic fantasy, a violent fairytale for adults." - Irish Times (UK)
"...enthralling...superbly researched, brilliantly narrated and movingly resolved." - The Observer
"Every so often a historical novel comes along that is so natural, so far from pastiche, so modern, that it thrills and expands the mind. Pure is one...Miller's newly minted sentences are arresting, often unsettling and always thought-provoking. Exquisite inside and out, Pure is a near-faultless thing: detailed, symbolic and richly evocative of a time, place and man in dangerous flux. It is brilliance distilled, with very few impurities." - The Telegraph (UK)
"...Pure is an incredible book with imaginative writing." - SeattlePI.com
Daily Telegraph
This is a tale about "the beauty and mystery of what is most ordinary"... Miller lingers up close on details: sour breath, decaying objects, pretty clothes, flames, smells, eyelashes... He is also alive to the dramatic possibilities offered by late-18th-century Paris, a fetid and intoxicating city on the brink of revolution... Miller intimately and pacily imagines how it might have felt to witness it.
The Times
His recreation of pre-Revolutionary Paris is extraordinarily vivid and imaginative, and his story is so gripping that you'll put your life on hold to finish it. Expect this on the Booker longlist, at the very least
Daily Express
Very atmospheric... Although the theme may sound macabre, Miller's eloquent novel overflows with vitality and colour. It is packed with personal and physical details that evoke 18th-century Paris with startling immediacy. Above all he brings off that difficult trick of making the reader care about an unsymapthetic character. If you enjoyed Patrick Suskind's Perfume, you'll love this.
AUGUST 2012 - AudioFile
Les Innocents Cemetery has held the corpses of Paris since the fourteenth century. It’s now 1785, four years before the Revolution, and overflowing tombs and foul air have made the whole neighborhood uninhabitable. Young Jean-Baptiste Baratte, an up-and-coming engineer, has been commissioned to excavate the graves, transfer the bones (with appropriate solemnity and care) to the Catacombs and then destroy the cemetery and its attached church. Miller’s story focuses on atmosphere, and Ralph Cosham’s measured proficiency accentuates its pace and mood. His authoritative enunciation complements the gravity of Baratte’s task. The listener feels the weight of the task and its ramifications as all must choose the between the reeking past and the fresh air of the future. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
