Cathedral

I am not fearful of large books. Neither their length nor their depth of matter scares me. So, picking up Ben Hopkins’s Cathedral caused no sense of trepidation, especially considering I had loved other rather large novels on basically the same topic. Hopkins’s novel focuses on the building of a cathedral in the 12th and 13th centuries, and all of the people involved in that process. His novel touches on politics, religion, poverty, prejudice, vice, and so much more.

Cathedral has been compared to both Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth and Cathedral of the Sea by Ildefonso Falcones. Sadly, I do not believe it achieves the greatness of those two novels. The language is often beautiful but, even so, it cannot make up for what the story lacks in characterization. As a reader, I never cared for the characters in this novel the way I did in the other two. Because I was not invested in any of the characters, I found it difficult to stay interested in their relationships or in the bigger issues presented in the novel. Unfortunately, in this case, the quantity of pages does not equate to quality.