The Meaning of Night: A Confession [Paperback]

Michael Cox (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 17, 2007

The atmosphere of Bleak House, the sensuous thrill of Perfume, and the mystery of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell all combine in a story of murder, deceit, love, and revenge in Victorian England.

"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. As a young boy, Glyver always believed he was destined for greatness. A chance discovery convinces him that he was right: greatness does await him, along with immense wealth and influence. Overwhelmed by his discovery, he will stop at nothing to win back a prize that he knows is rightfully his.

Glyver's path to reclaim his prize leads him from the depths of Victorian London, with its foggy streets, brothels, and opium dens, to Evenwood, one of England's most beautiful and enchanting country houses, and finally to a consuming love for the beautiful but enigmatic Emily Carteret. His is a story of betrayal and treachery, of death and delusion, of ruthless obsession and ambition. And at every turn, driving Glyver irresistibly onward, is his deadly rival: the poet-criminal Phoebus Rainsford Daunt.

The Meaning of Night is an enthralling novel that will captivate readers right up to its final thrilling revelation.

Editorial Reviews

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* This enthralling historical novel--set in London in 1854, cast as a confession, and written in the dense and formal style of a Victorian novel--tells the unusual story of Edward Glyver, bibliophile, photographer, and murderer. Ostensibly the tale of a man whose rightful legacy has been deliberately withheld, it casts a much wider net, and at its center is its vivid portrait of a teeming London, "brilliant and beautifully vile." That dichotomy is also expressed in the deadly rivalry between scholarly Glyver and his archnemesis, Phoebus Daunt, who is esteemed as a poet but makes his living by bilking people of their money through elaborate con games while insidiously cultivating the affections of the heirless Lord Tansor. Raised in near-poverty, Glyver gradually becomes aware of the fact that he is Lord Tansor's son and begins a years-long search for evidence, but he is thwarted at every turn by the wily Daunt. An intriguing blend of book lover and man of the world, Glyver becomes completely obsessed with his quest, which takes him from exquisite libraries to smoky opium dens, dank bars, and gaudy brothels. His obsession also turns him from a discerning scholar into a cold-blooded murderer. Cox invokes emotions, from the iciest betrayal to all-consuming love, on a grand scale and gives them an equally impressive backdrop as he depicts a fetid London, its streets filthy but its people in thrall to the smallest details of social stratification. A masterful first novel and a must for readers of Iain Pears and David Liss. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 720 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (October 17, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393330346
• ISBN-13: 978-0393330342
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (149 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #543,674 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #46 in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Movements & Periods > Victorian

More About the Author

Michael Cox is the biographer of the ghost-story writer and scholar M. R. James. His first novel, The Meaning of Night, was shortlisted for the 2007 Costa First Novel Award. He lives in rural Northamptonshire, England.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

75 of 79 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The victim of a conspiracy strikes back September 4, 2006

By Rennie Petersen

Format:Hardcover

The subtitle of "The Meaning of Night" is "A Confession". And the entire book is indeed a long, slow-moving confession, written in the first person by a 35-year-old man in 1854.

The book starts with a 2-page teaser in which the confessor describes how he killed a man, an unknown man he happened to encounter on the street. Why? Because the writer of this confession needed to ensure that he was indeed capable of killing before continuing with his plan of exacting revenge over "his enemy".

The confession then jumps back to the 1820's, with the writer slowly but surely describing the complicated set of circumstances, the conspiracies against him, that brought him to the killing of the random man in 1854. Then the story continues to its inevitable climax.

The early Victorian era in England provides the background for the story. Morals were different in this age, with the rich and powerful having a very different concept of what was right and wrong than the common people, or the people of Western society today for that matter. Even the "good" people in the story (there are a few) sometimes act in ways we find disappointing, even though they were acting morally by their standards.

This Victorian background and especially the different moral standards play an important role in the story, and one feels that the atmosphere described in the book is very authentic. It's just depressing that everyone seems to be a villain in one way or another, and conspiracies are rampant.

The writer of the confession and the complicated story with several conspiracies against him and his decision to wreak a terrible revenge on "his enemy" do not come across with such a high degree of believability.... Especially the confessor's occasional expressions of remorse over the bad things he has done do not ring true. Or is this perhaps the author's intention? The confessor, in his desperate search for justice for himself, becomes just as evil and unjust as his despised enemy.

One interesting device used in "The Meaning of Night" is that it begins with an editor's foreword, and the book is full of footnotes and explanations penned by this editor. The fact that we know that this "editor" is fictitious does not reduce the effect. The reader will easily let him/herself be fooled into thinking that this must indeed be an authentic manuscript from 1854 because of the editor's many notes and footnotes.

This is a very well written book and very impressive, and I found it very enjoyable. My problem was finding it hard to identify with anyone in the story. The lack of morals or the difference in morals in the Victorian era were a barrier for me.

Rennie Petersen Read more ›

72 of 79 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars NOX AND COX September 3, 2006

By DAVID BRYSON TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

The publishers seem to have high hopes for this debut novel. If so, I'm glad to endorse their opinion of it and I share their expectations.

The story is framed as the account by a murderer of his quest for vengeance on the man who cheated him of his hopes and his rightful heritage. It is set in Victorian England, partly in seedy London, partly in the rural grandeur that surrounds the most venerable English aristocracy. This is a promising formula -- Sherlock Holmes and Dr Jekyll have never lost their fascination. However it takes skill to recreate the atmosphere convincingly in the 21st century, and Michael Cox, biographer and editor of the great ghost-story writer M R James, seems to me never to hit a wrong note. The narrative is tense and eventful, but it's all slightly tongue-in-cheek too (as James himself was), and rightly so. The manuscript purports to have come to light in Cambridge University Library, and there is a preface by a personage entitled the Professor of Post-Authentic Victorian Fiction at that seat of learning, together with footnotes as the story goes along. The Professor hints darkly at 'conscienceless brutality and explicit sexuality', but don't get your hopes too high if that's your kind of thing - what the Professor says is not wrong, but what you will find is not exactly what his phraseology might lead one to expect either.

The style of writing is very sure-footed in not overdoing the pastiche-Victorian idiom. It is kept at a nicely-judged level of suggestiveness, but you would never take it for 19th century writing. One incidental benefit of this is that when letters are quoted and Cox goes in for a more explicit attempt at reproducing the Victorian manner of expression the contrast is all the more effective.... The plot is very carefully worked out too (Cox seems to have taken 30 years over it). All the threads are picked up, sometimes in surprising ways, and all the hints and leads genuinely lead to something and are not wasted or forgotten. The story-line is complex up to a point, but there is no attempt at bamboozling the reader, and there is a pleasant clarity about the narration that kept me interested and expectant throughout the 600 pages of the work.

I found it all very involving I must say - I really cared about the outcome, and the detail is very convincing as well, particularly, for me, the excruciating interview between the narrator and Lord Tansor. As reading for entertainment it is a pretty superior effort. If it took 30 years I don't suppose we can expect a lot more from Michael Cox, but if I see anything else bearing his name on the cover I am going to be prompt in buying it. Read more ›

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars PART ENGLISH HISTORY...PART ENGLISH MYSTERY... September 24, 2006

By Lawyeraau HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

This is a wonderful, highly stylized work of historical fiction. Those with a penchant for Victorian literature will appreciate this book, as it is written in the style of the period with a great deal of thought given to detail. The book begins as a presentation to the reader by a University of Cambridge Professor of a manuscript discovered in the Cambridge library among some papers. As such, the professor has added many footnotes that serve to illuminate some of the historical and literary allusions and references interspersed throughout the book. This was a literary contrivance that I very much enjoyed, both as a history buff and avid bibliophile. The overall concept is really that of a book within a book.

The manuscript purports to be a confession of sorts, as it tells a story of friendship, betrayal, and revenge, revealing a secret that had a profound impact on those whose lives it touched. After reading just the first sentence, I was hooked, as the story begins with a cold-blooded murder. Set in Victorian England, the story is told by an Edward Glyver, who is seeking to avenge himself on Phoebus Rainsford Daunt, a childhood friend whom he met while they were students at Eton. While at Eton, a wrong was done to Edward that would mark him forevermore.

The book offers a myriad of interesting characters and relationships that shaped Edward Glyver. The book is also rife with intrigues, coincidences, and secrets that deliciously unfold bit by bit, drawing the reader into the spider web of deceit that surrounds Edward Glyver, deceits that he is discovering and trying to unravel. The forces of good and evil are at work here, but who is good and who is evil is left for the discerning reader to determine, although such a determination is not always so black and white....

Peppered with memorable characters, as well as a gripping plot, this is a well-written book that will keep the reader riveted to its pages as the plot thickens. While some of the plot is predictable, despite its twists and turns, I still found myself barely able to put the book down, so I can do nothing less than to highly recommend this immensely readable book. Read more ›