Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land [Paperback]

John Crowley (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: William Morrow (2005)
• ISBN-10: 0739464442
• ISBN-13: 978-0739464441
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,849,309 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John Crowley was born in the appropriately liminal town of Presque Isle, Maine, in 1942, his father then an officer in the US Army Air Corps. He grew up in Vermont, northeastern Kentucky and (for the longest stretch) Indiana, where he went to high school and college. He moved to New York City after college to make movies, and did find work in documentary films, an occupation he still pursues. He published his first novel (The Deep) in 1975, and his 14th volume of fiction (Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land) in 2005. Since 1993 he has taught creative writing at Yale University. In 1992 he received the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He finds it more gratifying that almost all his work is still in print.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars more accessible and sometimes more entertaining than crowley's previous great books, July 9, 2005

By 

Mina (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land (Hardcover)

Although I take issue with what some reviewers here have said--that this is Crowley's best book (no way, that's "Little, Big")--I think that "Lord Byron's Novel" is certainly one of the two or three best novels of this year. It really is extraordinary and audacious: a novel-within-a-novel written entirely in the idiom of 19th century England--punctuated by a epistolary novel written by electronic mail! What the hell? This is bizarre stuff, and it doesn't always work, but for the most part it absolutely does, and the book is incredibly entertaining and inventive. From the Polanski-like contemporary father to the Satanic Lord Sane in Byron's lost novel, there are some extremely memorable characters here...quite honestly, I was thrilled by the whole novel.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Is there any spur to our feelings that is as sharp as Renunciation?", July 23, 2005

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land (Hardcover)

The young son of an Albanian mother is discovered in Albania by his Scottish father, Lord Sane, who brings him back to a deteriorating manse in Scotland and schools him for a new life as his heir. Ali, the boy, apparently tainted by the Sane family curse, soon begins his misadventures. A painful young love, a gruesome hanging, an escape by ship in the moonlight, the discovery of a young woman masquerading as a boy, ominous sleepwalking episodes, the periodic appearance of a bear, the arrival of a ghostly double, false imprisonment--all these events figure in Ali's story, which illustrate all the complications of a Gothic romance.

Author John Crowley presents Ali's story as the missing novel written by George Gordon, Lord Byron in 1816, creating a scenario in which Byron's missing manuscript is sold to finance Byron's involvement in European movements promoting Liberty and Freedom. Clear parallels exist between events in Ali's story and events in Byron's life, but Crowley also connects Bryon, through his manuscript, with the life of Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace, Byron's estranged daughter.

In a third plot line, a web site designer, Alexandra Novak, known as "Smith," is working on a site devoted to women's science history. Georgiana, her client, purchases some papers found in a seaman's trunk which once belonged to Ada's son Byron, who ran away to sea. Georgiana shows Smith a single sheet of an unknown manuscript in Byron's handwriting, but there are many additional pages containing long columns of numbers, their importance unknown. Smith's attempts to discover the secret to the numbers, written by Ada, unfold simultaneously with Ali's story.

Crowley maintains his fine sense of where and when to change the focus from Ali to Ada to Smith in order to keep the tension and interest high, creating intriguing plot lines which intersect and gradually reveal parallels in the lives of the characters. Life, love, betrayal, alienation, separation and reconciliation are themes pervading all the subplots, and the coincidences and moments of revelation, common to all romantic novels, keep the reader intrigued.

There is no real suspense, however. Crowley begins the novel with an episode from Ali's life, making it obvious from the beginning that Byron's novel IS discovered. The biographies of Bryon and Ada are well documented, and no suspense evolves from new discoveries. The episodes in Ali's life are similar to those in many other Gothic romances, not unique. Still, I found the novel to be a delightful read--a terrific escape into romanticism, possibly the most classically romantic novel in recent years. n Mary Whipple

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comes together beautifully, July 2, 2005

By 

JA "JA" (Northeast) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land (Hardcover)

"The Evening Land" is indeed another great novel by Crowley. Other authors (including, arguably, Crowley himself) have written novels about modern characters making extraordinary discoveries both historical and personal as they pore over ancient manuscripts--but here, the novel for the most part IS the manuscript, and it is quite a story. To write an entire novel in the voice of Lord Byron takes some remarkable audacity, and Crowley pulls it off. The story is thrilling and pretty hilarious--like this bit, right after "Byron's" protagonist Ali has been arrested for murder:

"...For the Law has undoubted Majesty--and that Majesty is not diminished when we observe the Law's wig askew, or its waistcoat misbuttoned; nor in that we have seen the Law drunk at the Fair, or upon the public road..."

It's these sort of cheerful, sarcastic, offhand pleasures that make the novel-within-a-novel such a pleasure to read. And the end of that novel, the last few paragraphs, in which its title is finally explained, are some of the more oddly haunting and unexpectedly emotional paragraphs I've read in recent memory. This book is full of surprises and pleasures, large and small. (Especially look out for certainly anagrammatical secrets hidden in a few places...some characters are more than who they seem, though most readers will miss it...)