Product Description

"Superb.... An engrossing and complicated tale...that touches on every aspect of Victorian society."—Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World

"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. 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #42960 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 704 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Resonant with echoes of Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens, Cox's richly imagined thriller features an unreliable narrator, Edward Glyver, who opens his chilling "confession" with a cold-blooded account of an anonymous murder that he commits one night on the streets of 1854 London. That killing is mere training for his planned assassination of Phoebus Daunt, an acquaintance Glyver blames for virtually every downturn in his life. Glyver feels Daunt's insidious influence in everything from his humiliating expulsion from school to his dismal career as a law firm factotum. The narrative ultimately centers on the monomaniacal Glyver's discovery of a usurped inheritance that should have been his birthright, the byzantine particulars of which are drawing him into a final, fatal confrontation with Daunt. Cox's tale abounds with startling surprises that are made credible by its scrupulously researched background and details of everyday Victorian life. Its exemplary blend of intrigue, history and romance mark a stand-out literary debut. Cox is also the author of M.R. James, a biography of the classic ghost-story writer.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
Michael Cox's The Meaning of Night is the most recent example of what one might dub "Victorian noir." As in a 19th-century sensation novel -- think of Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, John Meade Falkner's The Nebuly Coat or even Charles Dickens's Bleak House -- its intricate plot turns on the question of who should rightfully inherit a great estate and a sizable fortune. Oaths of secrecy, matters of identity, cold-hearted revenge, relentless subterfuge and mysteries of all kinds play their considerable parts. At one point, the narrator is frankly told that he should "trust no one." The reader, too, might bear this in mind.

The sensation novel, after all, deals in narrative traps for the unwary and diabolical plot twists and innocence besmirched and oily evil laughingly triumphant (at least for a while). But Cox further darkens his own superb pastiche by imbuing it with a modern noir sensibility when he makes the character of his hero as unsettling as that of his villains. From the first sentence we find ourselves lost in moral perplexity, our sympathies unanchored and adrift: "After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off to Quinn's for an oyster supper." The I here is Edward Glyver, the ostensible "hero" of the book, a gentleman of the most contradictory nature. On the one hand, he can discourse knowledgeably about rare editions and Old Master prints, work with a fine sensibility at his photographic studies, succor those less fortunate and comport himself with an almost chivalric courtesy. On the other, he allows an innocent man to step to the gallows, regularly resorts to opium or streetwalkers to relax his nerves and consciously betrays a woman who loves him. Worse yet, he murders a complete stranger. What kind of hero is this?

First of all, don't picture Glyver as one of those high-spirited Victorian bounders we secretly envy or even admire; he's no Flashman. Neither is he the kind of charmingly amoral aesthete or the "bold artist" that Thomas de Quincey depicts in his perverse essay "On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts." In fact, Glyver brutally stabs to death a total stranger for an utterly practical, existential reason: He needs to test whether he has the mettle to kill a man in cold blood.

Almost from the start, then, the reader realizes that The Meaning of Night is more than a plot-driven thriller; it's also a study of psychological obsession. Glyver views his life as fated, as inextricably entangled with that of his erstwhile friend and now mortal enemy, the poet and sycophantic humbug Phoebus Rainsford Daunt. But is Daunt truly the monster that Glyver believes him to be? Or is Glyver peering into a glass, darkly, and glimpsing a reflection of himself? There are times in The Meaning of Night when one recalls those famous studies of a divided self, Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," Poe's "William Wilson" and, most harrowing of all but least known, James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. As Glyver himself solemnly writes:

"The boundaries of this world are forever shifting -- from day to night, joy to sorrow, love to hate, and from life itself to death; and who can say at what moment we may suddenly cross over the border, from one state of existence to another, like heat applied to some flammable substance? I have been given my own ever-changing margins, across which I move, continually and hungrily, like a migrating animal. Now civilized, now untamed; now responsive to decency and human concern, now viciously attuned to the darkest of desires."

In fact, virtually all the principal characters in The Meaning of Night partake of this mixture of dark and light, good and evil; they disclose the truth only under duress, and all know more than they seem to. While Phoebus Daunt may be a scoundrel, he's also the acclaimed author of 13 volumes of verse, chiefly historical. Isabella Gallini may be an expensive courtesan, a poule de luxe, yet she's modest as well as beautiful, innately courteous, loving and, yes, hardworking. The unctuous, weaselly Fordyce Jukes, reminiscent of Dickens's Mr. Skimpole, carefully decorates his commonplace flat with exquisitely chosen objets d'art. The wholesome, very proper lawyer Mr. Tredgold privately collects books and prints of a "voluptuous" nature, such as that notorious Renaissance classic The Sixteen Postures. Although Miss Emily Carteret walks in beauty like the night, she actually wears glasses and is nearing the spinster age of 30. (What's more, she displays suspicious affection for her close female friend.)

In Cox's pages only the bit players are likely to be what they seem -- the faithful school friend, the sadistic thug, the kindly antiquarian cleric. Still, the pale, sad Miss Lamb who visits the narrator during his childhood actually turns out to be. . . . Well, best not to say.

But one can say that The Meaning of Night ranges from the Edenic country estate called Evenwood to the stews and alleys of London, from idyllic afternoons at Eton to alchemical studies at Heidelberg, from the sanctuary of a great private library to the midnight violation of a mausoleum. Throughout, Glyver shows, again and again, how Phoebus Daunt has repeatedly wrecked his life, his hopes and his happiness. The novel is a story of retribution, the dispossessed Glyver's revenge on his evil daemon.

The Meaning of Night revolves around a long-buried secret -- you knew that -- and builds to a shocking surprise. Each of these is well hidden or well set up, but the first will be guessed by any confirmed reader of Victorian fiction and the second foreseen by any aficionado of film noir. Of course, one can never be wholly sure -- a further unanticipated twist of the knife is always possible -- and so one happily turns the pages, caught up in the grip of the ever-tightening action while awaiting confirmation of initial suspicions. Yet even when all the truths are revealed, the climax reached, and the final postscripts pondered, some readers are likely to close this accomplished novel with a smidgen of dissatisfaction. On a technical level, Glyver's key intuition about the meaning of sursum corda -- lift up your heart -- seems a bit far-fetched, and even for a Victorian pastiche the book moves slowly. But these are quibbles compared to that one inescapable fact: Though the major characters either get what they want or what they deserve, you really don't like any of them very much.

Perhaps this shouldn't matter. Yet Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov ax-murders an old woman and Camus's Meursault shoots an innocent Arab, and we still care deeply for both as souls in torment, as human beings. But Cox makes Glyver in particular decidedly, distinctly unsympathetic. The Meaning of Night is certainly a more complex novel as a result, but also one without a clear ethical center. Discussions of religious belief recur periodically in these pages, and perhaps the characters reveal, in their different ways, an Arnoldian loss of faith. Without it, one is left drifting in that universe of moral relativity best evoked in the observation of Dickens's villainous Fagin: "Some conjurors say that number three is the magic number, and some say number seven. It's neither, my friend, neither. It's number one." In such a Darwinian world, the only safe haven lies in the arms of the beloved, and maybe not even there.

The Meaning of Night is Michael Cox's first novel, but he is well known as an authority on 19th-century popular fiction, the guiding force behind several Oxford anthologies of ghostly tales and detective stories, and the author of a biography of M.R. James (who gave us the eerie and chilling "Casting the Runes," "A Warning to the Curious" and "Count Magnus"). Cox knows his stuff -- and some of his characters and plot elements faintly recall the books he's learned from, such as Sheridan Le Fanu's Uncle Silas. The Meaning of Night even comes replete with footnotes, Latin chapter titles and quotations, as well as a sprinkling of contemporary argot and slang. The editor's pseudo-scholarly preface cautiously describes the manuscript as "one of the lost curiosities of nineteenth-century literature."

It is that and more. However you judge Edward Glyver himself, he certainly tells an engrossing and complicated tale of deception, heartlessness and wild justice, one that touches on nearly every aspect of Victorian society. At 700 pages, it should while away more than a few chilly autumn evenings.

Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

From AudioFile
David Timson is superb in this lengthy melodramatic mystery, reminiscent of Poe's WILLIAM WILSON. As he recounts narrator Edward Glyver's confession, Timson's voice is as shadowy as the dimly lit rooms the players inhabit and as rich and sumptuous as their overwrought Victorian surroundings. Glyver, whose every move is colored by revenge, murders a random victim one night, just to see if he can kill. His true target is his archenemy, Phoebus Daunt, a prominent, popular poet with little talent and fewer scruples. Timson's myriad voices range from puny to plummy, from saintly to shady, each providing a perfect rendering of the character described. As Glyver's tempestuous, obsessive journey leads him through erudition, erotica, opulence, and opium dens, Timson is the listener's perfect guide. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Customer Reviews

A long, tedious, tiresome read
By volume, this book competes with 'Crime and Punishment' by Dostoevsky. By content, it fails superbly not only in story, but in writing style as well.

In a nutshell, the story is about an individual who feels betrayed by fate for his insignificant rank in society and one day decides to punish a man he believes is responsible for this misfortune. In all honesty, this is it. For 700 pages the author introduces mundane dialogs and meaningless characters and finally manages to convince me, no, to force me to ache for the death of the poor man, just so that I can see this book end. I seriously don't recommend this book.

If, however, you are determined to spend many, many, many hours reading something from the distant past, try 'The Egyptologist' by Arthur Phillips. It is a much more entertaining novel and will make the time you invest reading it seem a lot more valuable.

by Simon Cleveland

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.

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.