The Quincunx - Charles Palliser

Note: This review first appeared on Vulpes Libris where I am delighted to announce I have just become a fully fledged Book Fox.

Read: December/January 2007

Picture the scene: it is early December, Christmas lights blink at you as you walk through throngs of shoppers, laden down with presents for your loved ones. The air feels charged with an electric buzz. Across the cold tarmac the sweet sound of carollers makes you yearn for peace, quiet and a glass of mulled wine. Your shoulders ache, feet are sore. Then, just as you think the shopping is finally finished you are reminded of the one person you always forget, that person you really should buy something for. That person you never know what to buy for. Well never fear, for I have the perfect solution to all your woes.

The Quincunx is absolutely, positively, the perfect book for winter reading. Weighty as a draft excluder, thick as treacle, enticing as an open fire, you pluck it from the shelf a devour it. No book I have read provides such indulgent enjoyment. Fast-paced and exhilarating, it lures you in and takes you on a tour of early-nineteenth century England, with a conspiracy so enthralling it will keep you guessing long into the night – because once you get into the plot, there will be no putting it down until you are finished and the mysteries have finally been solved. It is one of those novels that could keep you company all winter, packed as it is with a horde of devious, dastardly, lovable, and mysterious characters. But despite its 1200 pages, you’ll probably be finished in a couple of weeks.

Whenever anyone asks me to recommend a book, this is what I suggest. The Quincunx is a proper story: epic in scope, with companionable characters, and a suitable dose of stimulation for the grey matter. I have never met anyone who had a bad word to say about it.

The plot follows Johnnie Huffam as he battles to stave off hidden conspiracies and outmanoeuvre his relatives in order to obtain the inheritance that is rightfully his. But in the meantime there is the small matter of just trying to stay alive…

It all comes down to a scrap of paper: the codicil the codicil to a will written half a century earlier, a will which has provoked greed, hatred, murder, and lunacy since before it was written. As enemies circle and the fate of the inheritance moves steadily towards resolution in Chancery, Johnnie must find out who he is, and his place in the wider familial quincunx, before it is too late.

If you like epic fiction you’ll love it. Although its setting makes it ideally suited to winter reading (why is it that when we think of the nineteenth century we think almost exclusively of cold grey streets, fog, thick overcoats, and families huddling around the fire? Is it because Christmas as we know it is such a nineteenth century invention, characterised so clearly in Dickens’s Christmas Carol? Or perhaps the smog of the Industrial Revolution has settled on the collective imagination?) it is really a novel for any time or place in which you want to lose yourself entirely in a great story.

But The Quincunx is not just a riotous plot-driven adventure – though that, surely is more than enough. It is a pastiche of the mid-nineteenth century novel, the kind made famous by the likes of Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens. Indeed John Huffam, takes his name from Charles John Huffam Dickens’s middle names, and the namesakes also share the same date of birth. However, these references are just the tip of the iceberg. The pastiche is there in almost everything from the characters, to the settings, to the central concept of the book itself: a debate between the concepts of law and equity, that is between what is written in law and what is deemed equitable or fair.

It is this pastiche that is most often discussed in regard to The Quincunx. But the term doesn’t really do the book justice. Far from simply paraphrasing and satirising classic authors, Palliser takes the skills, interests and characteristics of the mid-nineteenth century novel and perfects them, distils them, concentrates them, creating a novel which is more Dickensian than Dickens, more Collins than Collins ever was. It is everything you could want in a Victorian novel: episodic, all encompassing, and packed with denouements at every turn.

Added to this nineteenth century focus, Palliser uses a host of modernist devices including an unreliable narrator, inconclusive ending, and concealed structure to make the mystery all the more deceptive. There is a whole hidden structure which revolves around the number five, the quin of the title. There are five related families over five generations, whose five crests form a quincunx, an arrangement of five objects with one in each corner of a square and one at the centre. The novel itself is divided into five parts, and each part is divided into five books and then five chapters. In a review, this may seem irrelevant, but within this carefully designed mathematical structure are held many of the fundamental mysteries of The Quincunx. It is one of those books you could study for years and still not grasp fully. The amazing extent of this planning is made particularly clear in Palliser’s fascinating, if a little self congratulatory, Afterword to the current Penguin edition.

When I started reading The Quincunx on Boxing Day a few years ago, I thought I was in for a long period of concerted reading. I was anxious, uncertain, and wary due to the amazing length of it. Yet only six days later, about an hour into the new year it was finished. In the intervening days I barely got out of bed for anything, let alone to welcome in the New Year. And when I had finished, I found myself sad and lonely as at the passing of a friend. Even at 1200 pages The Quincunx is nowhere near long enough. I love every single word of it. And that is in spite it containing three of the things I most dislike in a book: small print, long paragraphs of text, and chapters which start on the same page as the previous one finished. Were it not for the engaging plot, it would be one of those dispiriting books in which just turning a page feels like a great achievement. But as it is the pages fly by as unnoticed as the minutes turning to hours.

For some the often lengthy discussions about law and equity could prove hard work, but I found them illuminating. At times Johnnie’s narration is a little mature and astute for such a young boy, but then what most exemplifies The Quincunx is a need to question everything, including Johnnie himself. This is particularly evident as Johnnie grows closer to his goal, and begins to realise that neither good nor bad can be taken at face value, and that trust is a dangerous emotion to give in to. And in the end, despite being focused on the absurdity of familial inheritance in a closed hierarchical society, the reader is left unsure as to the moral fortitude of its hero. After all he has seen, will his life simply offer yet more evidence for the selfishness of man?

You’ll just have to read it to find out.

So let’s return to where we were at the beginning of this review: it is December, you are out late and just need to find one more present before you can go home. Now you know exactly what to do: make a beeline for the nearest bookshop and place an order for The Quincunx (ISBN: 9780140177626). Who knows, if it is a good bookshop they might even have one in stock. That done you can return home invigorated, feeling somehow that the mood of winter has been captured in a series of black marks on cream paper.

And who said anything about giving it as a present?

10 out of 10

The Quincunx - Charles Palliser

Read: January 2007

We have all finished a book that we really enjoyed, only to find ourselves sad and lonely as at the passing of a friend. Even at 1200 pages I finished this glorious picaresque novel and felt bereft. Do not be put off by its length, for The Quincunx is a vast, symmetrical novel in which the startling scope of the narrative and setting is only matched by the dexterity of the author. Charles Palliser has created a compelling, exciting and fast paced novel in which the author’s talent lies in the deliberate ambiguity of plot and meaning. It is so good, I read it in 6 days, barely able to draw myself away from it to spend Christmas with my family.

It is the story of Little Johnnie, as he fights to stave off hidden conspiracies and obtain the inheritance that is rightfully his. As Johnnie struggles to resist the cunning machinations of his enemies and withstand the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, he is forced to travel the length and breadth of early Victorian England desperately trying to untangle the truth before it settles around his shoulders and strangles the life and future out of him. In the process, Johnnie meets people who transform his perspective, and slowly, piece by piece, he discovers who he is, and his place in the wider familial quincunx..

I love The Quincunx. It is one of those rare novels which brings joy to anyone who reads it. Three people told me I had to read it, including one prominent sales rep for a major publisher who goes slightly dewy eyed when it is mentioned. He has read it five times at least, can recall stories about it being the second ever Waterstone's 'Book of the Month' when it was published back in 1989. These passionate responses are thoroughly understandable for it really is this good. I have never known of a book which is received as rapturously by those I have recommended it to as this.

There are so many ways of reading this book that it would be impossible to conceive of them all. For what it’s worth, I read it as a battle between the legal and moral concepts of equity and justice. John is born into a secure little Eden from which he is chased away and spends much of the novel amidst the squalor and poverty of Victorian London (hell). Come the end of the book he returns to his ancestral home, that which all the intrigue has been centred on, and discovers a cryptic message: Et in Arcadia Ego (here we are in Arcadia). It is a moment of realisation that not everything is black and white, and perhaps, for good or bad, nothing will ever live up to our expectations. John has grown up and not all is as it may appear. But while the book has been focused on the absurdity of familial inheritance in a closed hierarchical society (with John apparently representing the morality of equity and justice), the reader is left unsure as to the moral fortitude of its hero. What have been his motives and how will his inheritance change him? After all he has seen, will his life offer yet more evidence for the selfishness of man? There are tantalising hints but much is left unsaid.

The Quincunx is a fast and exhilarating tour of Victorian society, with a conspiracy so thick and devious that it will keep you guessing long into the night – because once you get into the plot, there will be no putting it down until you are finished and the mysteries have finally been solved.

10 out of 10

Bitten by the bug again (a very bland blog post with some very nice looking books at the bottom)

I have been not so doggedly reading Ben Okri's The Famished Road for going on two months. That is the longest I can ever remember spending on a novel in my life. I now have only 99 pages to read, and hope to complete that by the weekend. It is not that I am not enjoying it - when I actually sit down to read I slowly get drawn back into it and enjoy it - but there is no plot tension or sense of discovery which keeps me thinking about it when I have put the book down, or drives me to actively seek to ever pick it up again. I read on out of duty, the desire to see where it is going, and enjoyment of some of the mythology, but as far as stories go, it is not one which will live long in my mind.

I have already planned my next months reading, and it contains nothing by plot based exciting stories. I will read a couple of children's books, perhaps a detective fiction novel, maybe The Unburied by Charles Palliser. I can't wait!

And yet last night, back at Waterstone's for a Graham Swift talk, I was overcome by the desire to buy books! Those I bought are ones which I have had reserved for a long time but have absolutely no intention to read in the immediate future. They are all (bar one) classic works of 20th Century literature (and the other is an ancient Japanese classic), so worthwile owning for that sake alone, and they were bought with gift cards so in effect cost me nothing.

But what was is that made me need to buy them? Was it just that I haven't bought books for a couple of months and wanted something else to read? Was it some innate need to possess and by extention associate myself with?

I don't know the psychological processes whch make me such a compulsive book acquirer so I will stick with a nice jacket demonstration of the beautiful new additions to my bookshelves.

The Magic Toyshop - Angela Carter







Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston






A Game of Hide and Seek - Elizabeth Taylor








A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving







The Hours - Michael Cunningham






The Pillow Book - Sei Shonagon

Influential Authors

Tough one, this.

I take the idea from Shelf Life. Which authors have influenced my thoughts on books, or writing. They are not necessarily my favourite writers, or those I most admire, but those who have influenced me in some way or another.

Over the years many authors have moulded and shaped my mind as a reader, and often radically transformed what I think about when I think about writing (haha, see what I did there?) Here are just a few of them.

1. Russell Hoban - Taught me that the only limit to writing is the extent of our imagination.
2. Haruki Murakami - Demonstrated how Magical Realism, well done, can express emotional upheaval through metaphor far more effectively than any amount of weeping realism ever has.
   He has also become my 'go-to' writer. Whenever I have become stuck with a book and struggled or not enjoyed finishing it, I go back to a Murakami novel and remember exactly why I love fiction.
3. Milan Kundera - Offered my first foray into fearsomely intelligent, intellectual writing. Enlivened my mind to the possibilities of what a novel can do.
4. Roald Dahl - Helped my fall in love with storybooks. I remember staying up late at night, huddled under the covers, when I was only about 7, desperately scrabbling through Matilda, totally unable to put it down.
5. J.R.R. Tolkien - The Lord of the Rings was the first adult book I read to myself, when I was 10 years old. I started off reading it with my Dad but got bored of waiting for our evening reading so decided to read it on my own and from then on I never looked back.
6. J.M. Coetzee - Demonstrated that great writing does not have to be complex or fancy, that what is most important is creating an atmosphere and telling a story and that the simpler you do that the better. Also demonstrates how unappetising sex scenes can be in fiction.
7. Charles Palliser - Reminded me that for all the great ideas you have, the story will always be paramount. If a reader cannot put a book down then that is the greatest achievement you can ever hope for.
8. Don Delillo - Offers a masterclass in the simplicity of good dialogue.
9. Toni Morrison - Taught me that you cannot judge a writer by their agent! No matter how infuriating, rude, or disrespectful an agent/publicist might be bears no correlation with how charming, and amusing the writer will be.
10. Kazuo Ishiguro - Showed me that writing is best when an author has the confidence to let their characters and events speak for themselves. That authorial commentary is best left to an absolute minimum.
11. Olga Grushin - HER STYLE IS DECEPTIVELY LIKE MINE! Gave me a sense that perhaps I can be a good writer.
12. Iris Murdoch - Ah, the unreliable narrator. Showed just how much you can do in the first person even if the narrator is delusional, confused and utterly unreliable.
13. Salman Rushdie - Where to begin? Inspires with every sentence. Demonstrates how mythology can bring a novel alive and create a colour palate of vivid imagination which works in counterpoint to the main plot. His lively, jumpy, excitable prose is an absolute pleasure to read. And he ties together ancient mythology with contemporary culture in a way few authors can.
14. Stephane Audeguy - Merges biography with fiction and fiction with biography in a way I have not seen done by anyone else.
15. Michelle De Kretser, Martin Amis and many others. How unbelievably unreadable and turgid some work can be. This is a very good lesson to learn.
16. Charlotte Bronte - The power of the narrator to carry a plot on their shoulders alone. If you have a great narrative, then I will read on forever, no matter what is happening in the plot.
17. G.K. Chesterton - The king of witty thoughts on writing. Argues that the simpler the prose is, the more you can convey. Less is definitely more.