The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox
Apr. 29th, 2007 12:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
A cold October night, 1854. In a dark passageway, for no apparent reason, an innocent man is stabbed to death.
So begins the extraordinary tale of Edward Glyver, book lover, scholar and murderer. As a young boy, Glyver always believed he was destined for greatness. Brought up in modest circumstances by the sea, this seems the stuff of dreams, until 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 now knows is rightfully his.
Murder. Deceit. Love. Revenge. These are the watchwords that Glyver myst call his own. His path leads him from the depths of Victorian London, with its foggy streets, brothers and opium dens, to Evenwood, one of England's most beautiful and enchanting country houses. His is a story of betrayal and treachery, death and delusion, ruthless obsession and ambition. And at every turn, driving Glyver irresistably onwards, is his deadly rival: the poet-criminal Phoebus Rainsford Daunt.
Thirty years in the writing, The Meaning of Night is a stunning achievement. Full of drama and passion, it is an enthralling novel that will captivate readers right up to its final thrilling revelation.
Much of the press for this book emphasised the fact that it took Michael Cox 30 years to complete. At times, it felt that it was going to take me as long to finish reading it.
I got introduced to this book via a friend who was able to give me an advance marketing copy of the first 7 or 8 chapters and I found the story so gripping that I immediately ordered a copy of the hardback via Amazon (unusual because I am normally a strictly paperback person). Unfortunately, the pace and interest that Cox manages in the first 100+ pages, simply doesn't translate to the rest of the book, at least, not for me.
I say "for me" because I know several people who thought this book was great - they loved the central device that he used to keep the plot going - namely whereby Glyvert's narration takes you through certain events up to a particular point, before telling you that he'll tell you more about it later and returning to some part of the backstory that he can then use to lead you up to the next particular point. Personally, I've never been a fan of this device - whilst you can get away with using it a couple of times in a story, the constant use of it began to bore me and suggested that Cox didn't have any faith in the power of his story simply carrying the reader through on a more linear path. Some of the backstory was interesting, but parts felt indulgent and tagged on - for example, whilst the scenes in Eton that first lead to the enmity between Glyver and Gaunt are important to setting up Glyver's motivation, they also fail to utterly convince in their own right - mainly because this is really the only time in the entire book that we get a sense of Gaunt as a character, and his portrayal as a vain, spiteful little schoolboy never leaves you, even when Cox would have you believe that he's rapidly becoming a criminal mastermind. More than that though, this narrative technique added surplus scenes that didn't really serve to do much other than see print added to more paper than was necessary - I honestly believe that this book could have been told equally well, if not more effectively, had Cox been persuaded to cut out at least 200 pages.
I also had severe issues with the style that Cox used to tell his story. The conceit of the book is that this is Glyver's handwritten confession, detailing everything that happened between him and Gaunt, which was discovered by some scholar who has edited some of the text to add footnotes explaining some of the 19th century references, thereby adding to its "authenticity". I can't even begin to tell you how irritating all the footnotes were. The transcriptions of the Latin chapter headings I could kind of understand, although they did give away what was going to happen. But the constant footnoting of shops and restaurants and items of clothes and so on and so forth just really got under my skin after a while - and more so because I was reading a copy of Mary Barton at the same time - a genuine 19th century novel written in 1848 - and whilst Mary Barton also had some footnotes to explain some of the dialect within the text, the editor was happy to use endnotes for anything further, thereby giving the reader the option of whether to turn to the back of the book to get an explanation, without interrupting the narration.
There is definitely some sense in this book of Cox wanting to have his cake and eat it, both when it comes to the narration (he wants you to believe this is a genuine story, but doesn't trust you to tell it in a conventional way) and also when it comes to his characters and particularly Glyver. We're supposed to believe that Glyver is an intelligent man of the world, someone with certain underworld connections which help him to get defendants off in court but who is ultimately too trusting and too in love with a woman (Emily Carteret) whose betrayal costs him everything. It's something that doesn't stack up - not least because Carteret's character is so icy and two-dimensional that whilst Cox continues to tell you how vulnerable she seems, it's something that wholly lacks in credibility. The twist at the end of the book is no twist at all to anyone who has ever read a mystery novel (let alone a 19th century novel) but what infuriates is when Glyver is given huge hints that she may not be on the level and not only fails to take them, but also fails to make any kind of cursory investigation that would lead him to discover the truth. I was particularly disgusted when Cox has a scene where Glyver blithely gives Carteret the very means of proving his claim, despite 2 scenes with 2 different characters just a few pages before, each scene and each character warning him not to do just that. It's too contrived to be either entertaining or believable and if I hadn't already been lost at the halfway mark, I think that this would have been the breaking point.
The Verdict:
After a terrific start, this book is ultimately a huge disappointment. Grossly inflated and far too contrived, for me it simply did not live up to the hype.
A cold October night, 1854. In a dark passageway, for no apparent reason, an innocent man is stabbed to death.
So begins the extraordinary tale of Edward Glyver, book lover, scholar and murderer. As a young boy, Glyver always believed he was destined for greatness. Brought up in modest circumstances by the sea, this seems the stuff of dreams, until 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 now knows is rightfully his.
Murder. Deceit. Love. Revenge. These are the watchwords that Glyver myst call his own. His path leads him from the depths of Victorian London, with its foggy streets, brothers and opium dens, to Evenwood, one of England's most beautiful and enchanting country houses. His is a story of betrayal and treachery, death and delusion, ruthless obsession and ambition. And at every turn, driving Glyver irresistably onwards, is his deadly rival: the poet-criminal Phoebus Rainsford Daunt.
Thirty years in the writing, The Meaning of Night is a stunning achievement. Full of drama and passion, it is an enthralling novel that will captivate readers right up to its final thrilling revelation.
Much of the press for this book emphasised the fact that it took Michael Cox 30 years to complete. At times, it felt that it was going to take me as long to finish reading it.
I got introduced to this book via a friend who was able to give me an advance marketing copy of the first 7 or 8 chapters and I found the story so gripping that I immediately ordered a copy of the hardback via Amazon (unusual because I am normally a strictly paperback person). Unfortunately, the pace and interest that Cox manages in the first 100+ pages, simply doesn't translate to the rest of the book, at least, not for me.
I say "for me" because I know several people who thought this book was great - they loved the central device that he used to keep the plot going - namely whereby Glyvert's narration takes you through certain events up to a particular point, before telling you that he'll tell you more about it later and returning to some part of the backstory that he can then use to lead you up to the next particular point. Personally, I've never been a fan of this device - whilst you can get away with using it a couple of times in a story, the constant use of it began to bore me and suggested that Cox didn't have any faith in the power of his story simply carrying the reader through on a more linear path. Some of the backstory was interesting, but parts felt indulgent and tagged on - for example, whilst the scenes in Eton that first lead to the enmity between Glyver and Gaunt are important to setting up Glyver's motivation, they also fail to utterly convince in their own right - mainly because this is really the only time in the entire book that we get a sense of Gaunt as a character, and his portrayal as a vain, spiteful little schoolboy never leaves you, even when Cox would have you believe that he's rapidly becoming a criminal mastermind. More than that though, this narrative technique added surplus scenes that didn't really serve to do much other than see print added to more paper than was necessary - I honestly believe that this book could have been told equally well, if not more effectively, had Cox been persuaded to cut out at least 200 pages.
I also had severe issues with the style that Cox used to tell his story. The conceit of the book is that this is Glyver's handwritten confession, detailing everything that happened between him and Gaunt, which was discovered by some scholar who has edited some of the text to add footnotes explaining some of the 19th century references, thereby adding to its "authenticity". I can't even begin to tell you how irritating all the footnotes were. The transcriptions of the Latin chapter headings I could kind of understand, although they did give away what was going to happen. But the constant footnoting of shops and restaurants and items of clothes and so on and so forth just really got under my skin after a while - and more so because I was reading a copy of Mary Barton at the same time - a genuine 19th century novel written in 1848 - and whilst Mary Barton also had some footnotes to explain some of the dialect within the text, the editor was happy to use endnotes for anything further, thereby giving the reader the option of whether to turn to the back of the book to get an explanation, without interrupting the narration.
There is definitely some sense in this book of Cox wanting to have his cake and eat it, both when it comes to the narration (he wants you to believe this is a genuine story, but doesn't trust you to tell it in a conventional way) and also when it comes to his characters and particularly Glyver. We're supposed to believe that Glyver is an intelligent man of the world, someone with certain underworld connections which help him to get defendants off in court but who is ultimately too trusting and too in love with a woman (Emily Carteret) whose betrayal costs him everything. It's something that doesn't stack up - not least because Carteret's character is so icy and two-dimensional that whilst Cox continues to tell you how vulnerable she seems, it's something that wholly lacks in credibility. The twist at the end of the book is no twist at all to anyone who has ever read a mystery novel (let alone a 19th century novel) but what infuriates is when Glyver is given huge hints that she may not be on the level and not only fails to take them, but also fails to make any kind of cursory investigation that would lead him to discover the truth. I was particularly disgusted when Cox has a scene where Glyver blithely gives Carteret the very means of proving his claim, despite 2 scenes with 2 different characters just a few pages before, each scene and each character warning him not to do just that. It's too contrived to be either entertaining or believable and if I hadn't already been lost at the halfway mark, I think that this would have been the breaking point.
The Verdict:
After a terrific start, this book is ultimately a huge disappointment. Grossly inflated and far too contrived, for me it simply did not live up to the hype.
