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The Meaning of Night: A Confession

by: Michael Cox
en

0393330346  9780393330342 

The Meaning of Night: A Confession
By Michael Cox




Product Description:

"Superb.... An engrossing and complicated tale...that touches on every aspect of Victorian society."—Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World "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 Glyver, booklover, scholar, and murderer. A chance discovery convinces Glyver that greatness awaits him. His path to win back what is rightfully his leads him to Evenwood, one of England's most enchanting country houses, and a woman who will become his obsession.




Summary: A Genuine Page Turner
Rating: 4

Michael Cox does a fantastic job of taking the reader back to the Victorian Ages and keeping him there. Suspenseful and logical, the book was hard to put down. The Meaning of Night was one of the best books I've read this year.



Summary: If The Night Is 16 Hours Long
Rating: 4

If you like complex stories about lost heritage, secret births, murder, sodomy, opium addiction, betrayal, lost love, and various perfidies told in the fashion of Dickens or some other early 1800s writer you'll like this. If you like long intricate narratives of about 400 pages, this is your cup of tea.

Unfortunately, and hence the 4 star rating, this book is closer to 600 pages. In these type tales details are what fills in the material and makes it worth reading. Trivia can add the atmospheric air that is necessary for this to work really well. Minutiae, however, often makes it hard to tell the details from the trivia and what is essential to the plot to what is tangential, and perhaps superfluous. Way too much of this book is taken up with minutiae. Numerous times we are told, "I was invited to take a glass of tea, which I accepted (or declined)."

I liked this book for the most part, but felt it was way to overblown. Michael Cox, although he has gone on to write other fiction, is primarily an editor and historian of 19th Century fiction and this book all too often reads as history or a chronology. For example there is a library described in general several times, in great (excruciating) detail once, and referred to several times. While the library plays a minor role in the plot, the amount of attention directed at it is out of proportion.

I'll probably read more of Cox's fiction, but be warned that this book is very long. It starts off with a bang and proceeds nicely for about a hundred pages. It then goes into a back story for hundreds of pages, the majority of the book in fact. This back story gets told over and over from several view points until you want to say, "OK, OK, I got it already." On top of that the story is told as if it is actually a discovered manuscript with `Editor's Notes,' and several appendices.

Mr. Cox seems to be an accomplished writer and I hope he learns to `kill the bull' more humanely in the future.



Summary: Astounding
Rating: 5


'The Meaning of Night' is an amazing read - arguably well beyond any other (modern) attempt at portraying the gloom and grit of Victorian England, whilst exhibiting the very literary eloquence and beauty that one would expect from a novel written in that time.
I have just recently finished this novel (or confession, mind you) and am most absolutely blown away by its complete and, for the most part, unwavering presentation, so much that felt the inclination to write this review immediately after turning its last page. If you've a passion for Victorian-age literature like myself, and even IF you're a purist who hasn't strayed into the almost-always-disappointing contemporary works that are rooted in those times, I've the feeling you'll find much enjoyment in this book. Bravo Michael Cox! Your 30 years of research toward this masterpiece has well payed off methinks.

-Ray



Summary: Michael Cox has passed away
Rating: 5

Michael Cox has passed away. Does anyone know if he completed the third novel that brings Meaning of
Night and Glass of Time to a close? I must say I shed a few tears when I learned about this tragic loss for the
literary world.



Summary: A great read
Rating: 5

i never read these kind of historical novels but this one kept me interested from the beginning. it really captures the mood of england, from the landscape, the class system, and the opive gloomy winter. more importantly, it's a complex story of a man's need for revenge from someone's who has wronged him.