This book opens with the narrator murdering an innocent man in preparation for murdering a less innocent one. In slow, stately fashion, Edward Glyver’s tragic story is revealed: born to a poor family and badly wronged during his schooldays, to the life-long cost of ever earning a Fellowship, Edward discovers that he is the heir to a vast fortune and a beautiful country mansion…and that the man who wronged him once before has usurped his place here too. Edward painstakingly tries to find the evidence that will restore him to his true family and heritage, but his arch-enemy and rival, poet and criminal Phoebus Rainsford Daunt will do anything to stop him.
The book is full of the melodramatic tropes of Vic-Lit – lost heirs, double-crossings, coincidence and unlikely meetings, the criminal underclass on the grimy streets of a beautifully recreated London, blackmail and nemeses, hidden letters and secrets kept to the grave – but is not told with too much drama. The pace is slow, annoyingly so at some times; in real life, it’s normal to get distracted by other concerns and not realise you’re holding the clue to or resolution of a mystery in your hands, in fiction, you just want the character to open the damn package or read the tell-tale letters already, not ramble on for twenty pages before they get around to it.
The immorality of Edward is also an interesting theme of the book. It’s clever to open with his worst action, the unprovoked murder of an innocent, because over the next 600 pages he has time to win the reader’s sympathy back.
On the other hand, it means that a bit too much information is given away early: the reader knows he has failed in his original quest to prove his parentage (and by all narrative precedent, had no hope of success once he has committed murder) and that he was betrayed by someone – who that is, then, is obvious enough and so we lose all tension. It also makes Edward seem quite dumb at times, since the reader has more information than his flashback-self does and works things out faster than he does.
We also see how long-term his immorality is. Consorting with prostitutes and visiting opium dens, whatever; causing an innocent man to be hanged to save the true criminal at the behest of his lawyer-employer…well, you kind of asked to lose your quest, now, didn’t you, Edward?
He’s the narrator so it’s hard not to root for him, and it’s not like Phoebus deserves the fortune either – his bad streak is apparent though we barely meet him; he is Edward’s haunting ghost, not really a flesh-and-blood on-page villain. Yes, very hard not to want Edward to win despite being dubious about whether he deserved it. At the same time, I wasn’t disappointed by the way things turn out for the pair of them.
The Meaning of Night was obviously heavily researched, and the author’s love of Victorian literature comes through. It is a satisfying tale if you can reconcile yourself to an unashamedly slow pace, being fed the same information repeatedly, and being thoroughly bathed in backstory. Certainly, I was compelled to keep reading, drawn in despite myself, and I think the audio version would be particularly apt to listen to on dark winter evenings.
This was Michael Cox’s first novel (took him thirty years but earned him one hell of an advance) and he is writing a sequel, according to this old interview. The book’s website is here.
Interested? Buy it from Fishpond.com.au
