When I was a kid, I fell in love with these great big, old, aromatic tomes called "classics". J.F. Cooper was an early favorite. And of course, Charles Dickens was not far behind. I had no friends whatsoever who seemed to be able to enjoy sitting down with a slow, fascinating read like "Barnaby Rudge" or "David Copperfield" or "The Last of the Mohicans". But that didn't stop me from reading more and more books like them.Fast-forward to my early twenties. I was at a bookstore, and found this beautiful artwork on the dust jacket of this very thick book by an author I had never heard of: Charles Palliser. The name of the book was just as beautiful as the artwork, and just as intriguing: The Quincunx. Paging through it, I decided it must be an old classic I had never previously seen. Yet when I looked at the copyright, I saw it was a modern novel. It was on the discount rack, and I decided I give it a try for a few bucks.What a fortunate day that was.Some books can be read without the slightest investment of your senses. Like reading through the window pane of a bookstore. You see the words, you enjoy the story, but you never get through the glass. Other books will draw you in a few feet. You dip into them, satisfied to taste a familiar treat, or smell an exotic location. You step away from the book and those little impressions stick with you for the rest of the afternoon. But there are rare occasions when something else entirely happens.Opening the Quincunx was magical, and I could feel immediately that I had not only stepped into the book, but I pushed along far enough so that I could not see the opening of the book, and the room in which I was reading it. No matter that I put the book down to eat supper, or laid it aside to sleep. I never really got out of that book. Even now, twenty years after the fact, I can still put myself back in that world. It has a flavor all its own. The people there still brush by me in three-dimensional form. And the drama that unfolds within those pages will always keep me spellbound.The book is full of characters that just never leave you. The story, like a Dickens book, is complex, mysterious, and full of adventure. There is a bitter-sweet romance, and villains, and everything you'd expect to find in Victorian London. There are country villages, graveyards, mansions, and yes, even an asylum for the insane. I've no reason to go into the plot here. If you want, you can read the book's summary. Or read other reviews that go into the story. But this is one of the books for me that transcends its story. Is it a good story? One of the best. But that's not the point. The point is that if what I have described thus far fills you with visions of curling up with a book in your favorite reading corner while you shut out the world, this is the book for you. If it doesn't, we may not have too much in common. This is, after all, what I think reading is all about: the chance to climb into a book that is full of its own unique, yet familiar world, inhabited by startling characters who are caught up in a drama that leaves you full of wonder and despair and awe.Ever since I've read this book, I have felt that something is wrong with a world where Charles Palliser is not only not regarded as a literary god, but most avid readers have never heard of him. What a shame that this is true.I've read this twice. After the first time, I nearly forced my wife to read it, and though she is not a fan of fiction (she's a poet), she loved it. It is time for me to read this again. Maybe this winter, when I can sit under a blanket on the couch with the wind howling outside and a cup of coffee to keep me company.
This review was originally published in The Christian Science Monitor.Think, if you will, of an earlier age in the chronicles of English literature–an age when authors such as Dickens, Thackeray and Trollope flourished. Remember a period in which verbosity was no crime and a novel was needed to fill the long spare hours of autumn evenings. Recall that time when themes were veiled in multiple layers of plot and characters, that era in which an author might freely discourse with his reader.It is to this previous epoch, more than to our own, that The Quincunx, Charles Palliser’s novel of early 19th-century England belongs.The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘quincunx’ as ‘an arrangement or disposition of five objects so placed that the four occupy the corners, and the fifth the centre’. In the context of Palliser’s book, the quincunx is an heraldic device of five fleurs representing the five branches of a single family–the heirs of one Henry Huffam. For a decade, the Huffam heirs have feuded, employing both legal and criminal means, for the control of a vast fortune, the disposition of which depends upon the suppression, destruction or revelation of a codicil to a will.The central figure of Palliser’s quincunx is John Mellamphy. He is an child at the novel’s outset, with neither father nor surname, but the rightful heir under the terms of the codicil. His mother–the timid and trusting woman who holds the coveted codicil–is bilked of her small income through the machinations of her father-in-law. Desiring safety from their enemies, and seeking some measure of economic support, Mrs. Mellamphy takes her son to London. Instead of finding succor, she places herself and her son in further danger.Swindled and humiliated, the Mellamphys are reduced to a life of meanest poverty, scrabbling a meagre living on the fringes of London’s depraved and criminal underworld. Mrs. Mellamphy finds release in drug addiction. Buffeted between despair and danger by foes bent on his destruction, the boy joins the ranks of the homeless, begging for bread, sleeping in doorways and gutted buildings. Doggedly, he pursues the truth of his paternity and the resolution to the issue of the codicil and the Huffam inheritance. But this is only the surface of the plot.The author has peopled this dark realm of avarice and equity with vivid characters. In the style of Dickens, Palliser melds the metaphoric and realistic, creating a rich concert of humanity caught in the grip of universal, unfaltering truths.Throughout this cathartic epic, Palliser’s tone and language remain locked in the Victorian aesthetic. His narrative voice is sharp and stark, slicing clear etchings of that world of glimmering half-light and distorted lime-lit shadows we glimpse in sepia daguerreotypes. It is a prose style more familiar to readers of Thackeray, lacking the sentimentality of Dickens.As in Dickens’ Bleak House, The Quincunx explores the vast cavern of corruption and greed within the context of property and equity under the law. Like him, Palliser has woven the components of a gripping mystery into a substantial work of social, historical and literary merit. The Quincunx disturbs, provokes, enthralls, enriches, entertains, and reveals truth. It is, indeed, a masterpiece.
What do You think about The Quincunx (1990)?
Holy Cow what a page turner, and it better freaken be at 700 something pages!!! I may have made a big mistake reading this now that school is back in session, I may not finish it till schools out. All that aside its really good. It feels like a really good Dickens with lots of crazy characters and twists and turns. Love it!!!Now that I've finished it I'm a bit bummed with the ending. But then again how very Dickens. He seemed to have some trouble wrapping up his endings as well. Ah the same I still loved it!!
—Eliza
Take Dickens, multiply the filth, poverty and desperation by five; multiply the cast of characters by five; multiply the number of plot twists, betrayals, double-triple-quadruple-and-quintuple-crosses by five; and multiply the multiple identities by five. Add a speculative real estate scheme, a couple of phony front companies, a banking and credit crisis, a raft of lawyers, lenders, borrowers, beggars and stealers; and then run the whole thing through a sieve of the major moral, political, social, and economic philosophies of the last couple of thousand years exploring the big questions, ethical dilemmas, and theories of distributive justice, e.g.: When do the ends justify the means? Is life random or by design? Are human beings capable of altruism or motivated solely by self-interest? When is stealing and lying acceptable? What creates the greatest good: trickle-down economics or a welfare state? Is money the root of all evil? Throw in opium addiction, prostitution, money-laundering, grave-robbing, duels, murders and mayhem; plunk it down in (extremely well-researched) early 19thC London, divide it up into five books representing five families, and spin it all around a will, a codicil to a will, another will, and an heir: a young boy, John, who doesn’t know who his father is and whose life, quite literally, depends on his ability to figure it all out … and you have The Quincunx.
—Jennifer (aka EM)
If every other novel was like this it would be terrible. I'd never leave the house. I'd call my office : "sorry, can't make it today, I have 450 pages to finish, I'm sure you'll understand, put it down as a family emergency" and eventually they'd email me - "you're fired" - but I wouldn't read the email. My cat would have to become feral. Empires might tumble, Bob Dylan might be chosen as the next Pope, I wouldn't notice.Anyway, fortunately, most novels aren't either this good or this long, so we can live reasonably normal lives.The Quincunx involves lots of delicious Victorian squalor, detail upon detail of filth and horror, the bilgewaters floweth and the sewers burst forth, there are villains, people have goitres, there are beatings, and I think there's a little donkey in there somewhere.
—Paul Bryant
