This is a truly excellent historical novel, winner of the 2011 Costas Prize, and set in Paris just before the Revolution. Jean-Baptiste Baratte, an ambitious engineer from Normandy, is summoned to Versailles by a Minister of the Crown and offered a job in Paris. He is tasked with demolishing the Church of les Innocents and excavating and disposing of the remains in its cemetery. Even though the centuries old burial place has not been used in years, its odor permeates the les Halles neighborhood. Progress requires its demolition. Jean finds an organist, a sexton, his granddaughter and a blind priest on the premises. He enlists the help of all except the priest. He travels to a mine in Normandy where he used to work, recruits 30 men, and a foreman, and soon the digging begins. It's not as hard as mining coal, but it brings its own challenges. There is stench and the unique experience of digging up layers and layers of bones as far as 30 meters deep. In order to take care of the men, Jean authorizes extra pay, tobacco pipes and whores on Saturday night. On and on they dig, and the idea of excavating a cemetery wears on the bodies and souls of all involved. The foreman tries to kill the sexton's granddaughter. After his landlord's daughter tries to bash in Jean's skull, he falls in love with a local harlot and asks her to move in with him. Months into the project, the city has prepared the quarry* to receive the bones. After they excavate the cemetery, they turn to demolishing the church, succeed, and at the one year mark, the job is done. The miners scatter. Jean is older, wiser and happier, when he returns to Versailles to hand in his report. The Minister's office, indeed the whole palace, is empty. The author has written across a wide range of topics and has received many awards and has been nominated for the Booker. He's very good. This book immerses one fully in its time and place. I cannot recommend this enough.
*The quarry was filled with the remains excavated from many cemeteries and is now the Catacombs of Paris.
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