Pre - Revolution France, 1785. A young engineer, Jean-Baptiste Baratte is hired by the government of Louis XIV to clear out the cemetery at Les Innocents, which has been active for centuries and is now filled beyond capacity to the point that the bodies no longer decompose properly, resulting in a horrid stench that reaches far beyond the cemetery walls - the weight of the corpses has destroyed the wall of a nearby building and bodies ended up in its cellar. It is not hard to figure out the most literal meaning of the title. Baratte's job is to exhume the corpses and then move them to a new site far outside of town, as well as demolish the now closed church. The job will prove to be much grander in scope than Baratte or anyone else could imagine (there's a LOT of people buried there. A team of miners is employed to do the exhuming, constructing rickety retaining walls as they dig deeper and deeper, and still find more remains. Essentially the poor have begun to be noticed and are invading the lives of others.
The inhabitants of the area are split on the project; some are happy to see the cemetery and all its foulness go, but others are not; this has been part of their life for as long as anyone can remember - this would seem to be a reference to the coming turbulent times, when large scale death would once again be a source of division. Baratte is renting a room from a local family and their teen age daughter attacks Baratte at night with a hammer while he is sleeping. Dr Guillotin has a small part in the book.
Just the character names are enough to give you a sense of things. The protagonist, John the Baptist Churn - a precursor to the more serious agitation to come. His friend from the village, Lecouer, who with Baratte, has designed a vision of utopia, translates to "heart." The project will have great impact on both of their lives, leading Baratte to question his vision of the future in a country that will soon see changes beyond which anyone can imagine.
Miller is a fantastic writer - his novel Ingenious Pain is one of my favorites and Pure isn't much behind that.
