The meaning of night is death.

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	• The Meaning of Night Michael Cox Hodder And Stoughton Ltd., 2007 - 608 pages average customer review:based on 69 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Mixed feelings

This book received a good bit of attention upon its release a year or two ago, described as "Victorian noir" in the vein of Dickens and Wilkie Collins - two of my favorite 19th-century English lit authors, particularly Collins (The Woman in White is one of my favorite gothic mystery/suspense novels of all time!). I guess I can see where the critics came up with that, as the story is set in the Victorian period and told in the first person, but frankly, I say that's where the comparison ends.

Edward Glyver, the narrator of the story, opens by confessing to a random murder he commits in "preparation" for the one he's planning for his arch enemy, Phoebus Daunt (this is not a spoiler, as it's right on the synopsis of the book), who has managed through circumstances and luck to take a position in life and society that was meant for Glyver. The remainder of the 700+ pages serve to tell us how and why all this came about, and Glyver's preoccupation with ruining Daunt.

Although I have a sincere appreciation for Cox's obvious and exquisitely detailed knowledge of the English Victorian period - architecture, the geography and demographics of Victorian London, and the literature of the day, I did not care for Glyver's character at all. One might assume that's to be expected given that he openly commits a vicious murder right at the outset, but to me it seemed as if the author was trying to make Glyver a `hero' nevertheless. Honestly, the murder would not necessarily have predisposed me to disliking him, believe it or not. One can commit murder and still get a little empathy from me, depending on the circumstances. I just didn't like him, murder or not. He was a dishonest, insecure lout, professing his undying love for a woman and in the next breath running off to a brothel and banging some prostitute (or two or three). He had no loyalty to anyone or anything, and although I completely understood and would have shared his obsession with taking what he felt was rightfully his and wiping out his enemy, I couldn't get past the fact that he was a self-serving, whiny little pedant.

All I know about the author, Michael Cox, is that he also wrote a well-received biography of M.R. James, the classic horror writer. I think this is Cox's first work of fiction. Not a bad one, either - I'm not saying that. In a nutshell, I thought it was well-written, rich in period detail and possessing a potentially terrific plot, but I disliked the main character so much that I couldn't fully enjoy it and was left more than a little disappointed. I at least found the ending somewhat satisfying, and maybe that was Cox's whole point. I won't give it away, of course.

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The meaning of night is death.

"Revenge has a long memory," Edward hisses at Phoebus as he's expelled from Eton, a victim of Phoebus' malice and deceit. Disgraced and with his scholarly ambition thwarted, Edward returns home, whereupon the death of his mother leads to the chance discovery of her letters and journals. They suggest that Edward isn't really who he thinks he is. Rather, that he has ties to a wealthy and influential peerage. Back and forth from London to Northamptonshire, from the filth and squalor of the city to the grandeur of the barional estate, Evenwood, we follow Edward as he attempts to discover the extraordinary circumstances of his birth and compile the evidence that would prove his birthright. But Phoebus, his enemy, is forever an impediment to his plans. As the scheming and criminal protégé of an unsuspecting baron, Phoebus is soon to be named heir to the fortune that Edward believes to be rightfully his, and Edward is left with only one deadly option.

Set in mid-1800s England, "The Meaning of Night" is grim Victoriana that's dense with the enduring themes of betrayal and revenge. At close to 700 pages, it is a commitment, though one that doesn't come close to the 30 years its author, Michael Cox, dedicated to it. Mr. Cox said that he wished to emulate Wilkie Collins in this labor of love, and was enthralled by Dickens (specifically "Great Expectations") as a boy. The Collins influence is easy to see--"The Meaning of Night" is packed with intrigue; the Dickens influence obvious in its complex and delineated characters, and the muck and meanness of its London underbelly. Even their names are as Dickensian as they come--Achilles Daunt, Josiah Pluckrose, Fordyce Jukes, Willoughby Le Grice, etc. But in my mind, its protagonist, Edward G (Glyver, Glapthorn, and Ernest Geddington at various times), is nearer to a Trollope creation. In "He Knew He Was Right," Trollope introduced to 19th-century literature the term "monomania," a pathological and psychotic obsession to one subject, via his principal character, Trevelyan. In TMON, the bibliophilic Edward's object of his monomania is his archenemy, Phoebus Rainsford Daunt. The struggles between the protagonist, Edward, and the antagonist, Phoebus, also hint at Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and his nemesis Prof. Moriarty. I'm guessing that the decision to make Edward an opiate slave like Holmes was not arbitrary. The huge difference, however, is that Edward is not just obsessed and stoned out of his skull, he's also murderous. No doubt that TMON is a pastiche of the 19th-century sensationalist Victorian novel; the question is: Is it any good?

The novel's structure is creative. A fictional present-day professor, J. J. Antrobus, is presenting this unique find: a manuscript, positioned as "one of the lost curiosities of nineteenth-century literature" in which an Edward Glyver/Glapthorn/Duport has confessed to his crimes in stream of consciousness narrative (which really is this lengthy novel). In a further attempt at realism, Antrobus obligingly provides hundreds of footnotes to translate, define, and clarify its Latin chapter headings, obscure colloquialisms, bibliographic references, etc., as befits the fastidious academic that he is. The confessor, Edward, is an unreliable narrator, though; his mind, after all, is periodically clouded by opium and busied by hallucinations, and his actions do veer toward insanity. Like Dickens' "Bleak House," TMON is rambling, and events/storylines keep returning. It, too, has an overabundance of characters (I stopped counting at 30), but I didn't mind at all. I found all of it highly entertaining--the contrivances of its plot, the complexity of its principals, the drama and the intrigue. Unabashedly melodramatic, and overgenerous with Victorian staples and bizarrerie, it's derivative, alright, but it was also loads of fun.

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Divine!

I'm in the middle of the book, but couldn't wait to read others' reviews of this thoroughly satisfying book. I'm listening to the audio version, which is perfection. The story is doled out in delicious drops, sort of like eating your favorite ice cream one tiny teaspoon at a time, hoping never to reach the bottom of the bowl, and yet unable to stop. Yum. The characters are exquisitely fashioned; the author is a master of detail and human nature. I can't say enough good things about this incredibly entertaining work of art.

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