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Pure

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The age of Enlightenment introduced reason to the intellectual world of Western Europe. Spirituality and the ideas of the church were no longer considered above questioning. Body and soul were being seen as separate and death was becoming an inconvenience for the city of Paris. Overfilled cemeteries were a risk to the health of its citizens and precious space was needed to make room for the living. So, the church ordered the removal of these bodies to a more convenient location, which would eventually be the Catacombs of Paris, several kilometres of tunnels 19 metres below the surface filled from floor to ceiling with bones.
"Pure" details the experiences of Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a Norman engineer hired to clear the cemetery at les Innocence of its dead. He befriends those whose livelihood is dependent on the cemetery, Jeanne, the granddaughter of the sexton who develops a romantic interest in him and Armand, the cemetery's church organist who introduces Jean-Baptiste to the life of the enlightened. He hires miners from the mine where he worked and his engineering friend from the same site. As well, he becomes enamoured with a young prostitute who lives in the area. The mixture of old ideas and new coalesce to make a fascinating novel written in formal English that fits well with its subject matter. My main complaint would be that with the richness of the subject matter and the complexity of the characters, the story comes a bit short of fully exploring the issues developed in the novel.