This was a really amazing book. From the first chapter, I was prepared to hate Edward Glyver, but I came to sympathize with him. That's scary.Written and presented as though this were an authentic, manuscript written by a man confessing his deepest sins, Edward, the author, takes us through his time and his world. I particularly loved the attention on books. In our day and age of iPods, Blackberrys, and Kindles, the Age of Books seems to be teetering on the edge of Decline. I am fascinated by things like electronic books, but there simply is nothing to replace the feel of a real book in one's hand.Edward Glyver, a self-avowed Bibliophile, renewed for me what it is I love about books, old and new. I mourn for the time, inevitable though it seems, when a printed page will no longer be cherished.Love, murder, and revenge come to gentle and abrupt life within these pages. I cannot forgive EG for what he finally did, but I do hope that somehow he found happiness. ( )

This was a really amazing book. From the first chapter, I was prepared to hate Edward Glyver, but I came to sympathize with him. That's scary.Written and presented as though this were an authentic, manuscript written by a man confessing his deepest sins, Edward, the author, takes us through his time and his world. I particularly loved the attention on books. In our day and age of iPods, Blackberrys, and Kindles, the Age of Books seems to be teetering on the edge of Decline. I am fascinated by things like electronic books, but there simply is nothing to replace the feel of a real book in one's hand.Edward Glyver, a self-avowed Bibliophile, renewed for me what it is I love about books, old and new. I mourn for the time, inevitable though it seems, when a printed page will no longer be cherished.Love, murder, and revenge come to gentle and abrupt life within these pages. I cannot forgive EG for what he finally did, but I do hope that somehow he found happiness. ( )

The opening of this book is a real firecracker. First we get a comment from a present day literary professor, saying the authenticity of the following account is dubious at best. Then we dive straight into the shady lanes of London, where our narrator murders a complete stranger, “for practice”, then has an oyster dinner. Thank you, you have me interested!

Unfortunately the bulk of this book doesn’t quite live of to the beginning. The plot is dense and engaging, but the reversed chronology gives it’s main points away already at the beginning. The rest of the twists are a bit too predictable, and overall the writing is too meticulous for me. I’m not a big enough fan of historical fiction or bibliography to comfortably want to dwell on a million little details. I get jumpy and impatient. Plain and simple: I guess I would have wanted more gaslit London back alleys, knives and opium dens, and fewer letters from France and descriptions of library architecture.

But please don’t take my word for it. This is really not my genre. If you’re a lover of an old-fashioned story written in a style that feels authentic but never archaic, this might be just what you’re looking for. ( )

The Meaning of Night
Michael Cox
Nov 30, 2009 10:47 AM
A long and absorbing novel, set in Victorian London and Northhampshire, of love and betrayal, revenge, and destiny. It is written as a confession of Edward Glyver (alias Glapthorn), after he flees the consequences of killing his rival, Phoebus Daunt. Glyver learns gradually, from his reading of diaries, and correspondence, that the woman he thought of as his mother was caring for him as a great favor to her best friend. His true mother was married to Lord Tansor, who owned a great fortune, and when Tansor could not forgive the debts of his wife’s father she became determined to not give him an heir, even though she was pregnant at the time. She went to France for the duration of the pregnancy, gave birth and her friend, Simone Glyver, who had traveled with her, came home with the child. Edward is a scholar, and is sent to Eton, but expelled due to a malicious scheme by Phoebus Duant, who by coincidence is at Eton by the grace of Lord Tansor, who sees Phoebus as a replacement for his heir. Edward travels, and returns to England after the death of his supposed mother, and reading her diaries, deciphers the truth of his birth, and searches for proof. He falls in love, blindly, with Emily Carteret, another relation of Lord Tansor, and when he secures incontrovertible proof of his birthright, he shares it with her with her for safekeeping. She destroys it because she had loved Phoebus Daunt all along, and Daunt had long suspected Edward, and had been running criminal schemes to make money and keep from discovery. The book is rich in period detail, ornamented with footnotes to events and places in Victorian England, but a little florid in its prose, and somewhat slow in its plot. ( )

First Mystery Club ( )

"After I killed the red haired man I took myself out for an oyster dinner." Who doesn't love a book that begins this way? (Although I will admit, I think I may have misquoted a bit.) I love, love, love this book. I wanted to devour it. I would pick it up, and become so absorbed I would read until the light faded. My husband had to turn on lamps as he walked through the room, so I wouldn't go blind. Nearing the end of the text, I made myself stop and slow the pace. I didn't want it to end. This book really touched me. I can't quite explain it, but when I was finished reading, I felt like the book was still with me. I couldn't find a new book for quite some time. ( )

I don't know. I just don't know. In someways this was my kind of book, in some ways it wasn't.

It's a thick Victorian set mystery. The book is read as a confession, of course told in the first person. So in that way I had to view it a bit differently. Some people will complain that it's long and most of it is drawn out just by the narrator talking about things and not actually doing it. Well, if you read it as a confession, if you read it as though this is from an actual person sitting down with a pen and paper and unburdening himself of his crimes and passions, then who are we to say that it's drawn out? It's how someone lived and thought.

The reader knows the truth from the beginning, but it's interesting to see how the narrator finally finds the truth. And it's interesting to read inside his mind while he commit such crimes and talked to certain people, and so on.

I can't say I was completely satisfied with the ending. I admit, I was thinking it would go a different way. Either my way or the way the author wrote it, is still not a happy ending.

I can't say too much without giving things away, but I really don't know what kind of person to recommend this to. I'd say it's worth a try to anyone. You may be surprised. ( )

An enjoyable read ( )

A thriller that explores what occurs in the mind of someone who has been deceived and betrayed by love. The main character Edward tells us about his quest to get revenge from a Phoebus Daunt. The book captured my attention at the beginning but I felt that it was drawn out at some points. The ending was a little too predictable. ( )

I really liked this, and it is not the kind of book I normally pick up.
I agree that it could have used a good editor. A few times, especially toward the end, I lost my patience with the meandering, heavy text. But mostly I was fascinated by the writing and the story. ( )

Phew - I am glad to have finished this gargantuan door-stopper. It has been unbalancing my TBR pile for over a year and now the last page is over, I am putting it all together in my head.

I braced myself for a Victorian mystery romance novel, complete with authentic language and period plot. I was anticipating a page-turning cross between Sarah Water’s 'Fingersmith' and Charles Dickens 'Great Expectations]'. But the story was slow to reveal itself, and had a tediously plodding, linear plot-line that was unsatisfying and contrived and not at all suspenseful.

I suspect that the story was supposed to be an attempt at ironic Victorian pastiche. It took so long to engage me, I started to mentally reinterpret the writing – perhaps as parody, or tongue-in-cheek faux-Victorian study or something I was missing. I was over-thinking the writing, which was a bad sign.

We hear from the shady protagonist Edward Glyver as he confesses his history - he starts the story by describing a murder. From there, we get a long-drawn out history of his life. To be fair, there are some authentically effective descriptions of nineteenth century life, and some very evocative scenes that bought the novel to life.

I know this novel was quite well received, and Cox received lots of money for his advance (after taking 30 years to write it). I also know there is a new novel of his in the bookstore, but I will not be reaching into my pockets in a hurry to get in onto my shelves.

(Michael Cox recently died (in March 2009), at a relatively young age, of cancer). ( )

While Cox displays his wide knowledge of bibliographic novelty, his constant digressions and unimportant additions make this novel an arduous read and in the end not worth the effort. ( )

This historical fiction which reads like a mystery is a compelling and complex story full of twists and turns. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would have given it an even higher rating except for one significant factor. It is far too wordy. Michael Cox has quite a way with words and loves to put them together in long strings, but his writing style is excessively wordy and I can't say it adds to the story. If anything I found it detracted from the story and tried my patience. I was eager to follow the progression of the plot, and I was constantly thinking "Just get on with it - I want to know what happens next". His outstanding research is backed up with countless footnotes but I found most of them to bear little on the enjoyment or understanding of the story. Bottom line is...this is a great read, but certainly nothing to rush through. It needs to be enjoyed for what it is. ( )

Don't judge this book by it's cover, as I picked it up simply on how great the cover looked. This is a very ambitious book, but one that could have benefited from some aggressive editing. Told from the first person perspective of Edward Glyver, a rather unreliable narrator, we follow the life history of Glyver in his pursuit of the murder of Phoebus Daunt, who, according to Glyver, is the reason for every problem that has befallen him in his life. The story opens with Glyver murdering a random passerby, just to make sure that he is capable of the act, in preparation for the murder of Daunt. A rather intriguing opening.

What follows, however, is an amazingly detailed and sprawling history of not only Glyver's life, but that of Daunt and any other character who plays any part of strength in the story. These histories eventually begin to drag out longer and longer until I found myself caring not at all about any character in the story. Glyver becomes nothing more than a whining and unsympathetic caracature of himself. Within chapters of the end of the book, I was simply listening to the book to get to the end. I even found myself having forgotten what the point of the story was, Glyver's compulsion to murder Daunt.

The book becomes so bogged down in its own story and history that it looses all aspects of mystery or tension. I'm glad that I listened to it on audiobook, as Glyver's self-pitying rambling becomes so tedious, that had I been reading the book, I would have given up on it long, long ago. The best part of the audiobook is the narrator, David Timson, who enriches the character to a palpable level.

I give the book 2.5 stars only because it is obvious that Cox researched the time period extensively, almost to a fault. I think if he had focused more on Glyver's hatred of Daunt instead of going into extensive detail on every aspect of Glyver's life that seems to have been wronged by Daunt, the book would have moved much quicker. I would like to read something else by Cox in the future, but if it is this involved of a book, I don't know that I could bring myself to actually trudge through it. ( )

This was a good read, though a bit long, and it took awhile for it to really get going. I think Michael Cox chose to withhold a lot of info about the protagonist early on so that the reader would be curious to read on and learn more, but instead I had such little info about Edward that I didn't care about him, and didn't much care to read on. However, I did read on, and the story became more interesting and entertaining as I did. There are a few good twists and turns in the plot, though sometimes they took so long to get to that there was less of an "a-ha!" reaction for me, and more of a "finally, something happened!" If you keep reading, you'll enjoy the story of a tortured, obsessive man who holds a grudge like no other. One more note - don't bother reading the footnotes. They appear to be there to lend credibility to the idea that this is an actual historical document (rather than fiction), but the information provided rarely lends anything to the story. ( )

It is no secret that I love to dig my teeth into a well-written, atmospheric historical fiction novel. Michael Cox delivers in The Meaning of Night. It is a long-winding story almost Dickensian in the number of coincidences that occur and reminiscent of Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell in the number of footnotes appended to the text (though there are not nearly as many as Clarke employs in her novel). I am positive that this book would not appeal to every reader. Many reviewers have justifiably commented on how long and slow it moves. This is very true- it is slow. But the writing, to me, is so evocative of the Victorian London and its society that it really pulls the reader in. The Victorians were (to be completely stereotypical) long-winded hypocrites with a great many vices. And Edward Glyver is a man of his time, so thoroughly Victorian in his ideals and his behavior. As a reader, I could tell that Michael Cox really steeped himself into the period he was writing about- he lived it with Edward Glyver, and it comes through in his novel.

It is hard to review this book without giving much of it away- when that is the case, reviewers often turn to comparison. I have already used Dickens and Clarke in terms of authorial atmosphere. Should I throw in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment? If a person has been wronged, and knows who has done him wrong, is it justified for that person to mete out punishment and vengeance as he deems appropriate? Or, even if it is not justified, is it understandable? That is the premise of this luxuriantly winding memoir, full of internal angst, rage and the very real desire to belong. Highly recommended. ( )

Started out strong, then weakened. Certainly had the potential to be a great book. Dark. British. Murderous. But Cox drug it out too long and the end was all screwed up. There's a sequel. I bought it and will look to like it, but I'm not holding my breath. ( )

Ambitious but forgettable

Ambitious but forgettable

This was rather an enjoyable page-turner. Very well-written and erudite. The writing style and language were very pleasing and the characters intriguing, however the plot was built upon a highly implausible set of circumstances. In conclusion, the novel requires a good deal of suspension of disbelief in regards to key plot points and character motives. ( )

I cannot lie that the spine of this book is precisely what drew my attention to it. I have never been "ashamed" that I judge books by their covers - that is to say, I buy books based on their covers. Once read, the cover has little to do with my opinion, though I may make commentary on the appropriateness of it. I also cannot say that I am usually disappointed by my selection; books that look like [old] books are generally about books, or other literary things, and I tend to enjoy those. The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox was no exception.

This is one of those books you'll want to set aside some time to read, not only because it's very long, but because it's so extremely well written that you won't want to set it down. Ever. Not even to work. Not even to do daily tasks. I found myself carrying this book around with me everywhere I went, bumping into things and people on the way. Unsmartly, I read while waiting for red lights to turn. When I was out of the house, I visited bookstores just to pile through a chapter or two while I had some time to spare (a book of this size would not fit in the purse I was carrying around this month). Rarely does a book capture me so much as to distract me from everything, but this book did. I wanted to know about Edward, his motivations, why he killed the red-haired man and then went for oysters (this is not a spoiler; it's the first line in the book).

Edward Glyver has a passion for vengeance. He wants what is rightfully his, and feels the only way to get this is to assassinate celebrated writer Phoebus Daunt. Daunt, a young man from Edward's school days, usurped Edward in all of his ambitions - schooling, a particular woman, inheretence, and happiness - and Edward is determined to get back what is rightfully his. The Meaning of Night, pieced together from a handwritten account of the murderer's confession, takes the reader through Edward's history.

Both Glyver and Daunt are a healthy mixture of good and evil, making it difficult to find one to "root" for. If you enjoy books with a clear-cut hero and villian, this is not the book for you. Constantly throughout my reading of this book, I found myself changing "sides," one moment hoping that Glyver succeeded, the next wishing he would fail. It is written entirely from his perspective, being his confession, and thus is unreliable; sometimes the reader must draw conclusions of her own assuming the dimensions of the other characters.

Despite the 700-page length of this book, the plot never slows and the reader never gets bored. There is ever a twist or new character to dwell upon, though no character is introduced aimlessly; everything connects. Set in Victorian England, it is clear that Cox has a comprehensive grasp of the setting; the reader easily slips into the environment (sometimes having trouble readjusting to life outside...). I have read that this book is not unlike Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susannah Clarke, though I can't confirm this as I haven't read it, though it is reminiscient of Dickens.

Extraordinarily well-written and engulfing, The Meaning of Night quickly became a favorite. I would recommend it to anyone in need of an involved, complex plot. ( )

The Meaning of Night is a marvelous recreation of the 19th-century Gothic thriller.

I hesitate to say much about the plot because the joy in this book, as with The Woman in White, is in watching the plot unfold. I'll just say that it begins with a murder, and the killer is our narrator, confessing his crime and the reasons for it.

Author Michael Cox manages the difficult trick of giving the writing an authentic-sounding Victorian voice. Even those “shocking” parts referred to in the preface felt true to the period. You don’t have to read between the lines, but you also aren’t smacked in the face with the seediness of it all.

Really, this is the closest thing I’ve ever read to a 19th-century novel written in the modern day. Highly, highly, highly recommended.

See my complete review at my blog. ( )

My book group met last night to discuss The Meaning of Night, by Michael Cox. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this book.

The setting is Victorian England during the mid-nineteenth century. We meet Edward Glyver and he has committed a murder, of which he is confessing to. Here is a snippet from Barnes & Noble:

"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, book lover, scholar, and murderer. A chance discovery convinces Glyver that greatness awaits him. His path to win back what is rightfully his leads him to Evenwood, one of England's most enchanting country houses, and a woman who will become his obsession.

While attending school, Edward Glyver is framed by his friend Phoebus Daunt and expelled from the institution. As Daunt continues to be favored by all those around him, Glyver struggles with who is is and can't seem to find his purpose in life. Frustrated over his predicament, he manages to secure a job with Mr. Tredgold, who sees in him, what others cannot see. It is during this time that he changes his name to Edward Glapthorn.

During his employment with Mr. Tredgold, Glapthorn (Glyver) discovers a bit of information that could change his future for the better and put Mr. Daunt in his place, once and for all. In his quest for proof, he meets Miss Emily Carteret and falls madly in love.

When I started to read this book, I was a little taken aback by the immense size of the novel. It weighs in at just over 700 pages. As I began to read, it seemed a bit wordy for me but by page 100, I was completely hooked. I've heard from a few of you that you have this book in your TBR pile but that you have yet to pick it up. Well, pick it up and start reading!

The story is beautifully written. Every time I picked it up, I felt as if I was right there next to Glyver, feeling his frustration and pain. Glyver is the classic "anti-hero". He doesn't always make the right decision and sort of flounders through life, yet he is very likable and real and the reader can relate to him. If you like a book to take you away, then this would be a good one to read.

Since this was my book selection for the group, I worried at first that there may not be much to talk about. I mean, other than enjoying the book, would there be enough to discuss? I am happy to say that there was plenty to discuss and to my surprise, everyone read it! Even given its 700+ pages. We all agreed that the story did not really start until page 100. So if you read it, keep that in mind.

Many of the group members compared Cox's writing style to that of Charles Dickens. I have to agree with them and in a Q&A session posted here, he mentions that David Copperfield and Great Expectations started his love affair with Victorian fiction. He also mentions other novels such as The Woman In White and Moonstone.

After doing a bit of research, I found out that Cox has written a sequel to this book and it just came out this week! It's called The Glass of Time. I went straight to Barnes & Noble to buy it but I believe my book group wants to pitch it for next year's list so I'll hold off and wait until it gets selected. Maybe.

If you've read it, what did you think of it? ( )

I've never been a big fan of Victorian styled novels and here I've read Thirteenth Tale and The Meaning of Night virtually back to back. Of the two, I'd rate The Meaning of Night as clearly the better of the two.

While it can be argued that the book tends to drag at times, I was never bored and was ultimately captivated for the final 200 pages. Though, as I stated, I'm not a big fan of the genre, Michael Cox certainly delivers an excellently written and developed story.

In a nutshell, the narrator has, throughout his life, been bedeviled by a scheming scoundrel who has succeeded in attaining the highest levels of British literary and cultural society, many times at the direct expense of the narrator. This novel tells that story and the story of the narrator seeking the ultimate revenge.

Though some of the plot twists are easily foreseen, the novel is nonetheless well worth the readers time, even for those such as myself who do not normally delve into Victorian literature. ( )