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Loading... The Meaning of Night (2006)by Michael Cox
Going in, I was delightedly hopeful. Its blurbs make it sound like the next Quincunx or Winter's Tale. Its first line, "After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off to Quinn's for an oyster supper," is delicious. There's an English great house named Evenwood. Confidence was high. Coming out, I found the book a pleasure and lots of fun but not at Quincunx's level -- which is an unfair gauge. I wanted it to end differently and there were plenty of red herrings that really were only fish. I was entertained and at times engrossed in this book, and I loved the atmosphere and general tone of the book, but can't really give it a glowing recommendation. First off, it was way too long, and long winded. It just didn’t need to take anywhere near that long to tell this story. There were plot points that were brought up in the beginning and never mentioned again until the end, and by that time I’d completely forgotten about them. Most of the problems I had with the book could have been fixed with editing. I’ve read that the creation of the book flowed from the opening line, but it seemed to me as if the rest of the book went off on it’s own and that part was shoehorned in, the author being too in love with it to cut it. It’s unfortunate because it’s an intriguing line, but sets up the narrator as someone ultimately unlikable right from the start. I didn’t sympathize with him at all throughout the whole long story. That’s not always necessary, but it’s a pretty straightforward story and the appeal would seem to be our feelings for the storyteller. This book started out great. The first line, "After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off to Quinn's for an oyster supper." really hooked me. As the book continued it proved interesting, a tale narrated in the first person by a man of obvious derangement convinced of his own rationality and the fact that he is justified in any action taken towards furthering his own ends. Cox does an excellent job of capturing the feel of a Victorian novel, and I think that may ultimately have been the problem. As the story continued for page after page I simply got too bogged down in the sheer Victorian-ness of it. Tiny details of little or no interest and constant digressions from the main plot as the narrator sees conspiracies against him in every corner and hidden meaning in every turn of phrase. Sheer number of pages or word count is not usually a huge impediment to me, but there just wasn't enough of a pay-off here for me to have any desire to continue. Maybe someday I'll come back to this book and see if I'll find it any less of a slog, but this one was just too much for me when I first tried to tackle it. Written in the style and voice of an author from mid 1850s England. Pretty good I guess, maybe a 7/10. Even though much of its bulk was because of the overblown phrasings of the period, it still could have been edited a bit more severely. It begs the interesting question of how much extraneous description is need when writing in the style of excess? What is extraneous to the essential excessiveness? In other words, how much of the excessiveness is required to maintain the style, beyond which it merely becomes self-indulgent? Can they be separated?
"But The Meaning of Night is by no means a sensational Victorian pastiche. It is substandard, ersatz hokum. The only way to stay the course of its 600 pages is to treat the over-egged writing as tenaciously tongue-in-cheek." "It works on many different levels, being satisfyingly thrilling without the "deadly nullification" of thought and language so attendant on most thrillers (especially Da Vinci Code imitators) ...." "Although a weighty 700 pages, the story is unfailingly suspenseful." "The Meaning of Night is a gripping adventure story about a man’s thirst for revenge on the nemesis who has stolen his birthright. It is extraordinary because its literary influences are not only obvious, but integral." Instead he is eager to use words like vouchsafe as liberally as possible, so that “The Meaning of Night” has the ornate, curlicued linguistic niceties of a Dickensian period piece. Such affectations have the potential to be either voluptuously pleasing (as they were in Michel Faber’s “Crimson Petal and the White” and Sarah Dunant’s “In the Company of the Courtesan”) or arduously contrived (Elizabeth Kostova’s “Historian”). But in Mr. Cox’s version they are oddly colorless.
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0393330346, Paperback)The atmosphere of Bleak House, the sensuous thrill of Perfume, and the mystery of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell all combine in a story of murder, deceit, love, and revenge in Victorian England. "After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off to Quinn's for an oyster supper." So begins the "enthralling" (Booklist, starred review) and "ingenious" (Boston Globe) story of Edward Glyver, booklover, scholar, and murderer. As a young boy, Glyver always believed he was destined for greatness. A chance discovery convinces him that he was right: greatness does await him, along with immense wealth and influence. Overwhelmed by his discovery, he will stop at nothing to win back a prize that he knows is rightfully his. Glyver's path to reclaim his prize leads him from the depths of Victorian London, with its foggy streets, brothels, and opium dens, to Evenwood, one of England's most beautiful and enchanting country houses, and finally to a consuming love for the beautiful but enigmatic Emily Carteret. His is a story of betrayal and treachery, of death and delusion, of ruthless obsession and ambition. And at every turn, driving Glyver irresistibly onward, is his deadly rival: the poet-criminal Phoebus Rainsford Daunt. The Meaning of Night is an enthralling novel that will captivate readers right up to its final thrilling revelation. (retrieved from Amazon Thu, 03 Jan 2013 10:44:57 -0500) Convinced that he is destined for great wealth, power, and influence, Edward Glyver will do anything to reclaim a prize that is rightfully his, including a showdown with his rival, poet-criminal Phoebus Rainsford Daunt. |
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Usually I love books about revenge. Some of my favorites - The Count of Monte Cristo, The Prestige - are well-crafted, compelling vengeance tales. The Meaning of Night, however, misses the mark in a few respects. To begin with, it's about 200 pages too long. By the time I hit page 500, I started to feel annoyed that Edward was still whining about all the terrible things that happened to him. I wanted some action, some movement forward, something.
Secondly, Edward royally screws everything up by "falling in love" with a woman, and as is often the case in Victorian-era stories, he falls in love with her simply by looking at her. They haven't even spoken two words to each other before he announces to the reader that he is now forever her captive. Edmond Dantès certainly never let such stupidity get in the way of his vengeance.
However, Edward Glyver isn't Edmond Dantès, and that does make The Meaning of Night an interesting read. Edward is far from a trustworthy narrator. He's arrogant, short-sighted, and is so fixated on his nemesis that the reader starts to wonder, is Phoebus Daunt really responsible for everything Edward says he is? Or is Edward simply mentally unstable and paranoid?
Overall, I enjoyed this novel and its lush Victorian setting, although it would have benefited from a shorter length and less stupidity on the narrator's part. (