Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land (2006) - Plot & Excerpts
In between the seven years between the last and penultimate installments of his Aegypt cycle, John Crowley wrote two standalone novels of a different tone to his hermetic story. Far from being the mystical prose readers of his acclaimed Little, Big had come to expect/demand, these novels delivered a much more straightforward story, tighter plot, and clearer message. Lord Byron's Novel is the later of the two.The Evening Land has what appears to be a complex structure. It consists of a novel that is written (allegedly) by Lord Byron with annotations by his daughter and 'founder of computer sciences', Ada Lovelace. Throughout the book, we are also treated to some e-mail correspondences between Alexandra "Smith" Novak and her various associates: Her estranged father Lee Novak and lesbian lover Thea. These correspondences mainly serve to show how the novel was discovered and enciphered. This structure actually flows fairly well, with some of the e-mails serving as a means of clarifying/adding insight to passages of Byron's fictional novels all ready read by the reader or preparing the reader for passages to come. Ada's annotations serve as a more immediate explanation for some of the eccentracies of the Byronic prose and also to present information on Lord Byron as a person as Ada learns about the father she never knew.The book is replete with several themes: father-daughter relationships, celebrity issues, Liberty, and Coincidences to name a few. These themes get treated throughout the fictional novel, notes, and e-mail correspondence but are never really resolved. Not in any overt way, any way. From history we know Ada gets buried next to her father, and resolutions for our modern characters can be implied, but these themes are mostly presented and withdrawn from, usually with some snide, knowing remark from the fictional Lord Byron. It is enough to leave more ending-oriented readers with a sense of being left with an incomplete novel. And in a sense, it is an incomplete work. Lord Byron and his novel take center with Ada and Smith being mostly there to bring these elements to life. In essence, it is only by their interactions with the psuedonovel that we get to know them much at all. It is enough, though. Anymore actual prose may very well have upset the balance and created a lot of bloat. Then again, I kinda wished for more on the modern characters... as it stands, though, they exist for and only in relation to Lord Byron's lost novel. Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land has the potential to appeal to a wider audience than John Crowley's other more acclaimed works. It is wonderfully crafted and I am under the impression that this book could only be successfully written by Mr. Crowley. It will most appeal to those who are interested in learning about/considering the personage of Lord Byron. It is also replete with plenty of 19th century writing conventions, so the potential reader who has no interest in either would probably do well to wait on reading this book.
I read this book ages ago and, coming across it again recently, decided to renew my acquaintance with it. But ... 100 pages in, I'm giving up. The thesis is interesting -- a novel purportedly written by Lord Byron surfaces in modern times, along with notes for the manuscript written by his daughter Ada. That's very cool, not only because the novel contents are entertainingly romantic, but Ada's annotations are informative, based on Byron's actual life, and a neat nod to Ada's efforts in writing Notes for Charles Babbage's writings. Ada is a wonderful historical figure, and I enjoyed seeing (fictional) echoes of her here.What doesn't work, and is EXCEEDINGLY tedious, is the frame story about the modern characters who find the manuscript / notes and are trying to determine whether it's real. This should work fine, but this part of the story is all told through emails (no narration) and it's clunky and boring to read. It's also oddly out of sync now (e.g., the main character's father asks "What is strongwomanstory.org? I suppose I should know how to look for it on the Web, but..." She then proceeds to tell him how to click in the address bar and type in a URL. Really?! These people are communicating by email and he doesn't know how to enter a URL to go somewhere on the web? The book was written in 2005 -- it's not ancient or anything.So, eventually, I gave up because these modern characters got so annoying. Left alone, I'd totally read the rest of Lord Byron's Novel and Ada's annotations -- but other things are calling for my attention.
What do You think about Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land (2006)?
A fine and thoroughly disappointing novel.It is virtually devoid of the mystery and depth of meaning of Crowley's best novels, which I consider to be Little, Big and the Aegypt series. Technically, it is a marvel, and the mock Byron novel is a rip-roaring read, and even the email exchanges among the principal contemporary characters are interesting; but the book as a whole is terribly predictable (the Byron novel itself being predictably unpredictable). Considering that the novel includes an account of intense literary sleuthing, there is no suspense or sense of discovery. From the beginning you know that the Byron novel has been found, so the sense of excitement the characters feel and express in their email exchanges is totally defused en route to the reader. The book does explore the nature of self, but for Crowley in a very simplistic dualistic fashion (Byron (or rather his alter-ego in the novel-within-a-novel) is in the end revealed as a split personality ); but essentially the book is about daughters coming to terms with absent, troubled fathers, which is admittedly a moving subject, and I suppose Crowley handles that aspect with subtlety and depth, so certain people will certainly find at least parts of the novel moving, but it's just too specific a subject to carry the weight of the entire novel, which in the end I considered little more than an academic display of technical virtuosity, an excercise in various voices.
—Eddie Watkins
John Crowley's The Evening Land: Lord Byron's Novel is a dazzling tour de force of literary mimicry, as he recreates not only Byron's unique voice but also that of his daughter, Ada, a mathematical genius who, with Charles Babbage, developed the Difference Engine, the first computer. A multi-layered narrative, similar to AS Byatt's Possession and John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman, Crowley's novel centers on the discovery of a Holy Grail of English literature, the long-lost novel by Lord Byron, begun on that fateful summer on Lake Leman at the Villa Diodati outside Geneva, where Byron, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley and Dr. John Polidari engaged in a ghost-story telling contest. A terrifically exciting literary novel, part thriller, part high-brow literary investigation, part family drama.
—Jeffrey St.
Took about 7 attempts to get in to this, glad I did. The book is on three tracks: Byron's novel, Ada's notes on Byron's novel, and modern readers working their way through both. Once all three start gelling the pace picks up nicely, but the Byron novel is slow going even for folks like me who like the occasional Romantic novel (and Crowley does Romantic Novel very well). Extra points for having the modern protagonist being a lesbian and having that be only mildly relevant to the plot, and in no way Scary or Tragic. Extra *extra* points for thinking about Ada's son, a mostly forgotten figure. Plus, bears and zombies!
—James
