Pure

A metaphor for a country on the brink of revolution. Winner of the Costa Book Prize and considered by The Guardian one of the ten best historical novels of all time, Andrew Miller's "Pure" intelligently analyzes, through factual evidence, French society four years before the Revolution. 1785. Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a young Enlightenment engineer, said to be Voltaire's lover, receives a challenging mission from King Louis XVI: to rid himself of the church and cemetery of Les Innocents. At first, the protagonist sees this endeavor as a chance to cleanse the burden of history, the perfect task for a modern man, of the future, of reason. He soon senses, however, that the church and cemetery are merely harbingers of a greater downfall yet to come. Miller uses his hero, Jean-Baptiste, and the destruction of the church and cemetery as ways to dramatize one of the great questions of the Enlightenment: what is the status of the past? Is it something to be valued and preserved, or should it simply be forgotten? This annihilation is used by the author as a metaphor for progress and the willingness to leave the corrupt and tyrannical past behind. Puro has an elegant style, is exquisitely written, and has an ending unlike what the reader might imagine. It's a book about the impurity of society at the time, what the protagonist recognizes as the filth of the world. A plot that boils down to favoring disorder and confrontation. "Miller writes like a poet, with a deceptive simplicity. His sentences and images are intense distillations, clearly evoking the fleeting details of existence." (The Guardian) "His recreation of pre-Revolution Paris is incredibly vivid and imaginative, and the story is so gripping you won't put it down." (The Times) "Powerful and surprising. By focusing on the characters and story's byways, Miller evokes in a strangely tangible way a world that no longer exists." (Financial Times)