---
title: '📖 Book Review: The Evening and the Morning'
date: 2026-02-28T09:35:28.579Z
slug: 2026-02-28-book-review-the-evening-and-the-morning
author: Thomas Wilson-Cook
tags:
  - book-review
  - reading

---
This audiobook kept me company in the garden as I got through a handful of long-running chores.  At twenty-four hours in length I'm happy to say that the garden is at best half-finished!

About a decade ago, I picked up Follett's first three *Kingbridge* books[^1] for a similar reason: I was spending more time outdoors on my bike, and I used to love having audiobooks to keep me company.

What I have come to love most about Follett's writing is his focus on character narrative.  Especially as they run over many hundreds of pages.  At time I think he is prone to archetypes or simplification, but I'll leave it to the reader to consider how well any work of art has captured the internal experience of many people.

Although I take the historical accuracy with a pinch of salt, especially when it comes to the spiritual or religious lives of people at the time, Follett's writing about a time where we have infamously indecisive historical evidence.  I don't think this book would be much improved by higher maternal and juvenile mortality, or the comparatively much higher risk of food- and water-borne illness.  I think the good of humanising people that feel so distant to us does far more good than could be done by painting flawless historical accuracy.  

The book is pulled along by a cast of characters, neatly split into those that you like and those that you shouldn't.  He crafts villains and villainy well enough that I feel my blood boil when they get away with things, and sing when their past misdeeds finally catch up with them.  And although I praise him for making the characters feel understandable, I don't think he does much to help you sympathise with the villains.  To that extent, the writing can feel a little cartoonish, or more like a caricature than a studied portrait.

The moral narrative of the books seems to be that honest hard work and natural skill will eventually improve things, and that it's possible to improve a community as well as an individual.  That being kind and empathetic to people will give you a better social credit than being threatening.  I think that's a good lesson we should be teaching people, but I also think it has its limits.  But so does everything.

I have no doubt that, in several years, I will dig this audiobook back out so it can accompany as I lay fences, level some earth, or re-decorate some part of my house.

---

[^1]: I initially thought of these as a trilogy.  But reviewing their release dates as 1989, 2007, and 2017, I'm sure Follett's experience is a little more nuanced than "a trilogy".
