Why has no one made a movie of this book? A magnificent hill town in central France in the century of the Hundred Years War, a prolonged courtroom drama with gold at stake and with the whole community embroiled, a befuddled miser as the central character, his sly in-laws as the antagonists, the clergy and the bourgeousie in subtle conflict. Of course, a lot of the historical data and analysis would have to be omitted - that stuff about markets and trade, civic government, the effects of war on the economy, the efforts of people to avoid onerous taxes - and then a heady dose of imagination applied to achieve a satisfying denouement... but think of it, with Louis Malle directing and Gerard Depardieu as the judge!
I've read all six previous reviews of this book, all six complaining that too much historical information is included to distract the reader from the exciting tale of greed, all suggesting that Ann Wroe should have written anovel instead. Well, pardon me, friends, but you've missed the point. Yes, Ann Wroe writes very well and no doubt could have invented a proper novelistic ending for her narrative, but entertaining you was not her chief purpose. What she's written here is an insightful account of the life of ordinary people in an ordinary town, the sort of people who are seldom observed in history. Here's what she says about her own work:
**The story of [Peyre] Marques was preserved quite accidentally. We know about him only because a pitcher of gold was found buried in the floor of his shop. His son-in-law took it away, and ownership of the money was disputed in court. The result was a full-scale inquiry -- detailed character references, anecdotes, gossip -- about a man who was perfectly ordinary... For that reason alone, this case is precious. History keeps memorials of the great, the saintly or the vicious, but we may pine for the chance to hear about men and women more like ourselves: common folk.
Wroe's chief source for her narrative is the preserved court transcript from a trail in Rodez, France, in 1370. But Wroe also draws from other sources, principally her huge horde of general knowledge about the Middle Ages, the Hundred Years War, the history of the clergy in France, etc. In other words, the trial is only a framework for an attempt to describe the activities and values of a historical community, as little fictionalized as possible. I've studied a bit of this history also, and I've never read a book that captured an image of life in the Middle Ages more vividly yet reliably.
Like one of those reviewers who wanted a novel instead of a history, I enjoyed this book so much that I hoped for a sequel. The divided city of Rodez - the upper town dominated by the Church, the lower town by merchants - seemed so picturesque in the book that I actually drove half way across France to visit modern Rodez. Sadly, Rodez is perhaps the least well-preserved city in all the Massif Central, and much as I would like to follow the descendents of Peyre Marquez, like characters in Zola, on their journey toward the present, there can be no sequel to "A Fool and His Money" for the simple reason that no other such archival source is likely to be found. That the transcript of this trial has survived is a miracle in itself, which Ann Wroe has exploited brilliantly. With history this good, only a fool would ask for fiction.