Charles Palliser - An extraordinary modern novel in the Victorian tradition: a plot within a plot within a plot of family secrets, mysterious clues, low-born birth, high-reaching immorality, and, always, always the fog-enshrouded, enigmatic character of 19th century - London itself

Charles Palliser,  Quincunx, Ballantine Books, 1990.

„An extraordinary modern novel in the Victorian tradition, Charles Palliser has created something extraordinary--a plot within a plot within a plot of family secrets, mysterious clues, low-born birth, high-reaching immorality, and, always, always the fog-enshrouded, enigmatic character of 19th century - London itself.“

"You read the first page and down you wonderfully fall, into a long, large, wide world of fiction."
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

„The epic length of this first novel--nearly 800 densely typeset pages--should not put off readers, for its immediacy is equal to its heft. Palliser, an English professor in Scotland, where this strange yet magnetic work was first published, has modeled his extravagantly plotted narrative on 19th-century forms--Dickens's Bleak House is its most obvious antecedent--but its graceful writing and unerring sense of timing revivifies a kind of novel once avidly read and surely now to be again in demand. The protagonist, a young man naive enough to be blind to all clues about his own hidden history (and to the fact that his very existence is troubling to all manner of evildoers) narrates a story of uncommon beauty which not only brings readers face-to-face with dozens of piquantly drawn characters at all levels of 19th-century English society but re-creates with precision the tempestuous weather and gnarly landscape that has been a motif of the English novel since Wuthering Heights . The suspension of disbelief happens easily, as the reader is led through twisted family trees and plot lines. The quincunx of the title is a heraldic figure of five parts that appears at crucial points within the text (the number five recurs throughout the novel, which itself is divided into five parts, one for each of the family galaxies whose orbits the narrator is pulled into). Quintuple the length of the ordinary novel, this extraordinary tour de force also has five times the ordinary allotment of adventure, action and aplomb. Literary Guild dual main selection.“ - Publishers Weekly

„First novelist Palliser combines an eye for social detail and vivid descriptions of the dark side of 19th-century London with a gift for intricate plotting and sinister character development reminiscent of 19th-century novels. He weaves a complicated tale of a codacil containing a crucial entail, the possible existence of a second will, and a multiplicity of characters--all mysteriously related--seeking to establish their claims to a vast and ancient estate. Related by a young boy who often appears too worldly for his sheltered upbringing and wise beyond his years, the story occasionally bogs down in innuendo and detail which become tedious rather than suspenseful. Nevertheless, overall, this is a gripping novel. Highly recommended.“ - Cynthia Johnson Whealler
„I'm mildly embarrassed to admit that what attracted me to Charles Palliser's The Quincunx was the opening scene, which is staged as a meeting between Law and Equity. My law geek heart soared at the thought, and I was immediately hooked. Little did I know that the law actually plays a central role in this book, including several long passages on the precise legal rules governing the succession of real property. (Wonderful!)
The Quincunx, written in 1989, is the ultimate Victorian novel, crammed with every last element of that genre: decrepit manor houses, rolling countrysides, untrustworthy and loyal servants, mysterious men in top hats, debtors prison, an abusive orphanage, even a lengthy and disgustingly described journey through the London sewers. The story begins while the protagonist, Johnnie, is still a young boy, living alone with his mother and their servants in an old house. Johnnie's life seems uneventful enough, but soon he realizes that he and his mother are actually in hiding, and that his mother is bearing some dark secret that their enemies would kill to get. And what is that secret? There's something about an old will; something about the inheritance of two families; and somewhere in between, with very little stake in the actual outcome but with the ability to drastically affect the lives of two very powerful groups of antagonists, is Johnnie and his mother. In very short order, the two of them are driven from their comfortable lives and enter into a downward spiral of oppression and terror that occupies the bulk of this densely packed 800-page novel.
Sympathy and frustration provide the narrative drive for most of The Quincunx. The sympathy comes from the misfortunes that Palliser almost sadistically heaps onto Johnnie and his mother. Believe me when I say that things do not ever get better for them--their travails go on and on and on and on, until it is almost unbearable to see them being tortured further by the heartless families who seek to exploit them. Sympathy also is due when you realize just how little Johnnie and his mother can expect to benefit, even in the best of all possible outcomes. Make no mistake: The Quincunx is a very dark novel, and quite depressing to read.
But there's also frustration, from the incredible stupidity and naivete exhibited both by Johnnie (in the beginning) and by his mother (throughout the book). Johnnie's original naivete can be excused as the innocence of a young boy; indeed, one of the more remarkable features of The Quincunx is its portrayal of a young boy who becomes increasingly worldly and cynical as the book progresses. Johnnie's mother, however, is hair-pullingly stupid from the beginning: overly sentimental, overly trusting, overly optimistic. In many ways, she is more of a child than Johnnie, something that Johnnie comes to realize in a pivotal moment that marks his transition from childhood to adolescence. And perhaps worse than a child as well: there is an element of madness in her single-minded idealism, to which tragedy inevitably attaches.
I began The Quincunx with absolutely no idea of its contents. And so it only became gradually apparent to me, as I read along, that The Quincunx is actually a mystery novel, and an exceedingly devious one as well. Perhaps I should begin with the title. A quincunx is a collection of five points, arranged as the four vertices of a square and a point in the center (like the number 5 on dice). The quincunx is a motif that appears throughout the book, most notably in its structure: the book has five parts, each with five subparts, and the middle part and subparts (the centers of the quincunxes) are all crucial turning points for the mystery (if not for the actual plot).
And what is that mystery? Here is the whole of it: Who is Johnnie's father, and what did he do on the night he fled? As you will see if you read the book, at the end of each part, Palliser helpfully includes an ever burgeoning family tree that indicates the relationships between the various protagonists and antagonists of the novel. As more and more information becomes revealed to Johnnie over the course of the book, the family tree becomes ever more filled out, until at the end of the book there is a seemingly complete tree. But here's the key: That tree, and all of the ones before it, is inaccurate. The clues that Johnnie receives (and there are plenty of them, believe me) are at best ambiguous. He interprets each of them one way, but there are various indications that his interpretations are incorrect, and though he valiantly attempts to correct his understanding with each contradiction he runs across, in the end the weight of the discrepancies topples his own neat theory. It doesn't help that Palliser, knowing that readers will be trying to puzzle through the family tree, delights in throwing a flood of deliberately ambiguous clues at us, including the masterpiece of a last sentence, whose two possible interpretations force a drastic reinterpretation of everything that has happened in the novel.
There is, of course, more to the mystery than that: What happened on the night of Johnnie's grandfather's death (if he really is Johnnie's grandfather)? What is in the section of the diary that Johnnie's mother burned and threw away? What is Uncle Martin's role in this story (and the family tree)? And so on.
The mystery is fiendishly convoluted, a truly enjoyable brain buster that, according to Palliser, is actually solveable based on the clues in the book alone. It is also unresolved at the novel's closing, requiring a second reading for any real illumination. (Indeed, as I mentioned before, Palliser goes out of his way to throw a wrench into any seemingly consistent theory with his very last sentence.) Focusing on the mystery of the novel helps allay some of the frustration about the abrupt ending of the actual plot: while you think there should be some resolution of Johnnie's inheritance, Palliser gives you almost none. But The Quincunx is too beautifully written and too cleverly scripted to let that minor fault hobble it.“ - Steven Wu

„What's worse than finishing a 1200-page novel that you've thoroughly enjoyed? Finishing a 1200-page novel that you've thoroughly enjoyed, and realising that you're going to have to read it again to make sense of the last chapter.
"The Quincunx" is set in mid-19th-century England. We follow some fifteen years of a young man's life from his perspective as he finds out about the family he was born into.
I'm a sucker for books with structural constraints, so this book appealed for a number of reasons. The book's about five families, so each gets a Part, each of which is divided into five Books, each of which is further divided into five Chapters. The structure's also related to the later parts of the plot.
The book's written appropriately in the style of a 19th-century grand novel, although (since it was written in 1989) it takes us to parts of Elizabethan society that we haven't seen before. The author (as he explains in the appendix) is a great fan of 19th-century literature, and is quite prepared to poke fun at the conventions of the genre, or borrow and expand other novelists' situations where appropriate.
The plot of the novel turns out to be an immensely complex mystery story, reminiscent of "An Instance Of The Fingerpost" in a number of ways: it's centred around the occurrences of one night about which we've got several conflicting reports, and all the evidence is presented, so it's quite possible to figure out what's going on before the characters do. More interestingly, it's possible to see things they've missed or chosen to ignore — the conclusions that John has come to by the end of the book are most likely not those that you've worked out, and he keeps irritatingly quiet on some subjects that we'd really like to hear more about.
Maps and family trees are provided within the text, and there's an index of characters at the end. Unfortunately, the index is written from the perspective of the end of the book, so it's not a good idea to use it if you're halfway through and can't remember who someone is, as I found out. (I think there are some excessively early spoilers on the family trees too, although it's possible I just missed hints along the same lines in the text.)
This is a book that's going to require a second reading at some point, preferably with a notebook handy to write down names and page numbers as I encounter them. Thoroughly recommended.“ – Adam Sampson

„With a huge, colourful cast of characters, The Quincunx by British author Charles Palliser is, like Edward Rutherfurd's London, the kind of book that comes along all too rarely--a book wherein one loses all sense of the present as one is transported back through history to another time and place. This is a novel that is at once a family saga, an adventure, and a mystery with plenty of twists and surprises. With it, Palliser has proven himself to be a master storyteller, and it has been a long time since I have enjoyed a book as much as this. In fact, I'm not sure it didn't surpass London--another historical of epic proportions that I highly recommend--as my favourite novel by a contemporary author. (I ought to mention I've yet to read Eco's The Name of the Rose).
At 781 pages, however, this historical masterpiece set in early nineteenth-century England is not for the faint of heart. At stake is a legacy--title to a huge estate of land. Though the story literally takes place during the span of several years, it is a tale about an extended family (and their relationships with one another) whose beginnings take us back five generations. Bit by bit the family history is revealed--and it is a history rife with intrigue, double dealings, scandal, and even murder. What makes the revelation of the family history so exciting and so important is its relevance to the novel's present, for not only is the identity of our young protagonist and narrator, Johnnie Mellamphy, at issue, but his very survival hangs delicately in the balance.
Those for whom this engrossing, unputdownable novel will be a special treat are those who enjoy solving word or logic puzzles (I am a puzzle buff myself). To be enjoyed to its fullest, this is a book that benefits from active participation on the part of the reader; indeed, it is (in my opinion) to a certain extent mandatory. As the story unfolds, Palliser provides the reader with both outright information and clues (some of which are quite subtle) as to who's who, what really happened, and why. Palliser enjoys teasing us, and some of his subtle clues result in our drawing the wrong (though perfectly plausible) conclusions. At other times (particularly near the end), he refuses to spell things out for us, leaving us to rifle back to previous parts for a confirmation (and perhaps even an explanation) of what happened. For those with ready access to such, Palliser would even have one delving into reference books in order to find the dates when certain events occurred (like Johnnie's birth, for example), for they are all revealed by reference to other events which occurred at or around the same time.
I might just mention: I found it very helpful to create a family tree (in pencil!) as the geneology unfolded--be it from village gossip, facts, or my own suppositions. I also set out who would inherit if certain conditions were met and identified these individuals on the tree. Very early on, I began to dog-ear important passages that I thought I may wish to refer back to (to make the rifling back process easier!). Most importantly, I found this to be the sort of book that benefits from reflection, for it is by logically following an idea through in one's mind that one can reach a number of accurate conclusions ahead of the protagonist. Don't think that this will ruin the surprises for you, for it won't. Palliser, I have no doubt, expects no less of us.
In conclusion, I highly, HIGHLY recommend this to anyone looking for an intelligent, captivating, masterfully written novel. I simply cannot praise it highly enough. It is not, however, for the individual who expects to be spoon-fed by an author. In other words, if you are looking for something one can read while putting the brain in neutral, you'd best look elsewhere. With this novel, what you get out of it is directly proportionate to what you put into it!“ - Tiggah "the Anglophile" at Amazon.com

"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?“ - Sam Ruddock

„When I first started reading The Quincunx, I didn’t actually expect to stick with it – the blurb didn’t really grab me, and the sheer size of the book (1191 pages!) was a bit daunting. It took me a long time to reach the end, but I’m so glad I managed to finish it.
There are aspects to this book that makes it a difficult read. The story can be quite slow in places, but as these parts are relevant to the story, you can’t skim through them. There are also a vast number of characters, which can be hard to keep track of, and they all link up at some point or another (thankfully they are all listed at the back for an easy reminder if you forget someone). But with so many characters, and a plot full of twists and turns, I did find that I had to re-read some bits just to keep up.
However, these issues are easily overlooked – because this is simply one of the best books I’ve ever read. It has a complex plot which seems a little eccentric, but it really adds to the charm of the story as John Huffam attempts to discover the truth about his past. The Quincunx is a modern novel written in a Victorian style; I liked the fact it could quite easily fit in with the great Victorian classics by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. You could easily pick up this book and think it was published in 1889 rather than 1989. And despite the sheer size of the novel and my initial misgivings, the twisty plot definitely kept me in suspense.
For me, endings play a very big part in the success of a book – I could read a brilliant story, but if the ending isn’t great I’m always left feeling disappointed. I’m pleased to say that the ending of The Quincunx was extremely good; in fact, it made me want to read the book all over again. It wasn’t until I read the author’s afterword that I truly understood what had happened, so I went back and read the last page again – and then immediately wanted to start from the beginning to look for more answers and clues. I think this is one of the first times an ending to a book has actually left me really excited. I couldn’t wait to write about how good it was, which is surely the sign of an excellent book.
I’m sure The Quincunx is one of those books that I’ll never tire of reading, as I’m sure that with each re-read there are more details to be discovered.“ - Lauren C.

This is the story of John Huffam and his mother, the last of their line and the owners of a codicil to a will on which it hangs the fate of a rather valuable estate. So much so that many families have interest in achieving it, pursuing the mother and the child, conning them into losing their little income and actually trying to kill them more than once.
It’s easy to see Mary, the mother, as very naive. However she did have a rather sheltered life, both at her father’s and while hiding with her child in Melthorpe, which sort of explains her trusting nature and her little resistance in face of trouble. She is overall a good person and she cannot help thinking that all other people are the same. Her son John is a good person too (but way less trusting and with good reason to), and also preoccupied to see justice done – out of a love for justice not out of self interest.
I have to say that the part of the book that kept me on the edge of my chair the most (though there were a lot of scenes that have kept me there) was the part where John and his mother were penniless in London. Because… because it seemed like a near to impossible thing to survive in a big city with very little money or none at all. I really felt for them and their plight, it must have been very hard for them, especially as they have known nothing of poverty until then.
This is an absolutely amazing book. I have to admit that at first I was sort of confused by the complicated genealogical tree unveiled bit by bit in the pages of the book, and also by the legal implications each act of each person had, especially as I couldn’t always relate them to legal matters as I know them (not that I do know that much of them). For example I have never heard of a base fee, nor could I understand at first how was it that the Mompessons only had use of the estate, while in truth it belonged to someone else. However the legal matters were stated quite a few times in the book so after a little while I had no more problems with them.
The structure of the book is very interesting too. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it:
The book follows a theme of the number five – it traces five branches of one family over five generations, as they circle and maneuver around a fortune being determined in Chancery, and which of several wills (and one codicil) will be found valid. The book is divided into five parts, one named for each branch of the family (although they don’t necessarily focus on that branch of the family, but are still primarily told from the point of view of one character, John Huffam.) The family branches are The Huffams, The Mompessons, The Clothiers, The Palphramonds, and The Maliphants.
Each part is then divided into five books. And each book is then divided into five chapters. In general, in each book there are four chapters from first-person narrative of John Huffam, and then one chapter about other characters in a much more detached Dickensian tone, very similar to the way Esther Summerson’s narratives are alternated with others stories in Bleak House.
In at least one case, this pattern is reversed, and there are four chapters about other characters, and only one about John Huffam.
And, last but not least, in case you didn’t know (I didn’t), a quincunx is “the arrangement of five units in the pattern corresponding to the five-spot on dice, playing cards, or dominoes.” (again courtesy of Wikipedia :) )
What I liked most: Well, sort of… everything. The sheer complexity of the book. The plots and subplots and the way people kept reappearing in what seemed at the time like very awkward coincidences. The legal matters that have seemed so complicated at the beginning but rather captivating after I got the hang of them. The huge number of twists and turns. The way we never actually know how it all ends (though the author does hint at it somewhere in the book). Simply everything.
What I liked least: I have to admit that I did find John rather annoying at the beginning – especially the way he kept asking his mother sensitive questions in front of other people. When he grew a bit older I have also found a bit annoying the way he always thought bad of his mother, seeing her as silly and being ashamed of her. I do know, of course, that all these are not weaknesses of the novel but actual strengths, as John was then a kid and was thinking and acting not as the adult I wanted him to be but as the kid he then was. Hey, this is a near perfect book so it’s hard to find it an actual fault :)
Recommend it? Absolutely.
As a bit of trivia, did you know that Charles Dickens’ full name was Charles John Huffam Dickens? :)“ – Kay's Bookshelf

Susana Onega: The Symbol Made Text: Charles Palliser's PostmodernistRe-Writing of Dickens in The Quincunx

María Jesús MARTÍNEZ ALFARO: NARRATION-PARODY-INTERTEXTUALITY:REWRITING THE PAST IN CHARLES PALLISER’S THE QUINCUNX

Charles Palliser, The Unburied, Washington Square Press, 2000.

„In The Unburied, his compelling new historical thriller, Charles Palliser, author of the best-selling novel The Quincunx, masterfully resurrects the world of Victorian England. Dr. Courtine, an unworldly academic, is invited to spend the days before Christmas with an old friend from his youth. Twenty years have passed since Courtine and Austin last met, but the invitation, to Austin's house in the Cathedral Close of Thurchester, is welcome, for reasons other than the renewal of an old acquaintance. Courtine hopes that the visit will allow him to pursue his research into an unresolved mystery, using the labyrinthine Cathedral library. If he can track down an elusive eleventh-century manuscript, the existence of which only he believes in, he hopes to dispose of a potentially deadly rival.
But as Courtine prepares to settle into his research, Austin tells him the story of the town ghost, a story of duplicity and murder two centuries old. The mystery captures Courtine's donnish imagination, as perhaps it is intended to do. Doubly distracted, Courtine becomes unwittingly enmeshed in the sequence of terrible events that follow his arrival, and becomes a witness to a murder that seems never to have been committed.“

 „Though putatively a mystery set (mostly) in the Victorian age, Charles Palliser's The Unburied has more in common with Umberto Eco than Arthur Conan Doyle. Like The Name of the Rose, this novel is set in a scholarly community and features a lost manuscript as the McGuffin of choice. And here, too, the mystery is not really what the book is about at all. Palliser's tale centers on Edward Courtine, a Cambridge don with a bee in his bonnet about Alfred the Great. It doesn't take a great medievalist to figure out that Courtine has allowed emotion to cloud his reason concerning the Saxon monarch: his version of Alfred's life and character is so forgiving as to be downright suspicious.
When it is suggested that a source dear to his heart may in fact be fraudulent, he accuses his critics of cowardice. According to Courtine, those revisionist scoundrels doubt the veracity of his beloved source "because their own self-serving cynicism is reproached by the portrait of the king that Grimbald offers. You see, his account confirms how extraordinarily brave and resourceful and learned Alfred was, and what a generous and much-loved man." Now Courtine has come to the cathedral town of Thurcester because he believes Grimbald's original manuscript may be in the cathedral library--a manuscript that he hopes will validate his own version of the great king's reign.

„Palliser takes his time setting up his story, seeding it with clues that more often than not lead to dead ends. We learn, for example, that Courtine was once married, that his wife ran off with another man, and that he blames his school pal Austin Fickling for the rupture in his marital bliss. Dark doings at the cathedral are also hinted at, with quite a lot of space devoted to a murder that occurred centuries earlier. Meanwhile, ecclesiastical renovations turn up some unpleasant surprises--and as yet another murder ensues, Courtine is swept up in less scholarly pursuits. As the hapless academic (a Watson without a Holmes) pursues one red herring after another, it becomes apparent that Courtine's psyche is the real mystery on hand. History, he discovers, can obscure as much as it elucidates. All these years, his obsession with an idealized past has provided an excellent refuge from the realities of his present. In the end, what he uncovers is the secret of himself--and the reader of The Unburied is treated to a fine ghost story, in which the ghosts are quite literally all in the mind.“ - Alix Wilber
„Palliser has created another tour de force of intricate plotting and darkly Victorian atmosphere. As with the best-selling The Quincunx, the reader is compulsively absorbed by tantalizing partial truths and vague foreshadowings, though coincidence plays a less intrusive role here. On a visit to an old school friend in Thurchester, England, professional historian Courtine looks forward to doing research in the cathedral library and renewing ties; he does not expect to become embroiled in a controversy surrounding a centuries-old mystery, nor does he anticipate being a major witness to a gruesome murder. Palliser brilliantly portrays the vicious rivalries particular to self-contained religious and educational institutionsArivalries that have been repeating themselves for 250 years since the horrific death of Canon Treasurer William Burgoyne and the mysterious disappearance of the Cathedral Mason Gambrill. This riveting story is as much psychological thriller as it is mystery. Highly recommended.“ - Cynthia Johnson

„By now the stakes for murder mysteries have risen almost impossibly high. At the end of the century of the banality of evil, it takes more than a murder to make us shiver: It takes orgies, bloodbaths, refinements of sadism of the sort that Thomas Harris supplies. The quality that made Wilkie Collins' suspense novels so absorbing -- the claustrophobic feeling that a single crime poisons the universe -- is virtually impossible to achieve in an era in which we know from the newspaper that worse things happen in our own city a dozen times a day. And so it makes sense that Charles Palliser has set his new murder mystery, The Unburied, in the late 19th century. That's the only way he could regain some of Collins' Gothic power.
Palliser is unashamedly Victorian (his very name is out of Trollope) in hauling in haunted churches, menacing fogs, gas-lit streets, ancient ghosts. But he is also contemporary: His hero triumphs not just by solving the murder but also by resolving his own psychological problems. Edward Courtine, whose "found" manuscript makes up the bulk of the novel, is a middle-aged university historian specializing in Alfred the Great. He is also a husband emotionally ruined, even 20 years on, by his wife's having abandoned him for another man.
As the novel begins, Courtine is coming to the cathedral town of Thurchester to see Austin Fickling, an old friend who played a part in the jilting, hoping to rebuild their friendship. But as one might expect of a man who lives in a rickety house in the shadow of an ancient cathedral, Fickling is acting odd: toting strange parcels, screaming in his sleep, slipping out in the dead of night. To say that a murder ensues isn't giving anything away; in a town like Thurchester, it's practically de rigueur.
Indeed, the town has seen this kind of thing before. In the most innovative feature of The Unburied, Courtine's historical inquiries lead him to three earlier murders, which Palliser weaves into the main story: one involving King Alfred, one from the English Civil War period and a third -- the most important for the plot -- from the early 17th century, involving two deaths in the cathedral. The parallel between the historian's work and the detective's is clear as Courtine tries to solve the 17th century and 19th century crimes simultaneously, while the reader has to keep an abundance of names, clues and motives straight.
It's this plurality of crimes that keeps The Unburied from being a perfect suspense novel -- that, and the somewhat watery psychologizing that creeps in toward the end. Reading Courtine's "manuscript," we are naturally the most curious about the murder he himself is drawn into. But it doesn't transpire until two-thirds of the way through, and we don't find out the solution until the "editor's" postscript at the very end.
Instead we get a great deal of trumped-up medieval and 17th century history and philology, which simply aren't as satisfying. Every suspense novel shares the problem that the solution, when it's revealed, is almost inevitably unconvincing; hardly any crime can be wicked enough to justify the creepy atmosphere that the writer has built up around it. But Palliser's solution is even more unsatisfying than usual: It requires the intervention of several previously unknown characters and seems stuffed in almost as an afterthought.
Moreover, when the focus shifts to Courtine's own marital and emotional problems, we are transported to a psychologist's couch in 1999 and lose the Victorian flavor entirely. One character instructs Courtine that "it's only when the burial is over that the process of grieving can begin." Thus the multiple meanings of the title: The unburied is both the murdered man whose ghost cries out for justice and the traumatized man who needs to lay his "issues" to rest. But since Courtine -- appropriately for the narrator of a thriller -- is not a fully developed character (he is really an observer, a surrogate for the reader), it's hard to care much about his emotional needs. By asking us to care nevertheless, Palliser clouds the novel and distracts us from the (entertaining and absorbing) main business: the murder and its solution. Which is another way of saying that the old 19th century formula has life in it yet.“ - Adam Kirsch

Charles Palliser,  Betrayals, Ballantine Books, 1996.

„At once a hypnotic murder mystery, scathing literary parody, soap opera, and brilliant pastiche, Betrayals is an astonishing virtuouso performance by a modern master of literary gamesmanship in the tradition of Vladimir Nabokov and John Barth.
The novel unforlds in a series of seemingly unrelated narratives, each written in a different style -- indeed, in a different genre. There is an obituary for a Scottish scientist and Nobel Prize winner, written by a colleague who clearly relishes his death. Early in the century, a train in the Scottish Highlands heads down the wrong track during a winter snowstorm, and the passengers are forced to abandon the train, resulting in the death -- or is it murder? -- of one of them. An inane publisher's reader summarizes the plot of a tacky hospital romance novel, which ends in a gory murder all too reminiscent of Jack the Ripper. Even a report on a contemporary academic controversy explodes into a scandal of plagiarism, shattered reputations, paranoia, and suicide -- or is it murder made to look as such?
As Palliser deftly teases out each new situation, it becomes clear that they are all variations on a single outrageous theme: a distinguished figure in some intellectual pursuit -- science, literature, academia -- becomes obsessed with the success of a rival and schemes his demise, only to botch the job out of sheer monomania. Like the scorpion that stings itself to death, each plotter becomes a victim of his own plot; each betrayer changes places with the betrayed in an intricate dance of deception, revenge, and revelation.
A challenging, engrossing, utterly original work of art, Betrayals is also pure joy to read -- a book that will make you laugh out loud, turn pages madly in pursuit of the next plot twist, and above all, marvel at the supreme ingenuity of a fictional puzzle in which the unlikeliest pieces fit together perfectly.“

„Mixing a variety of genres and forms, Palliser examines the links between fiction and deceit.“ -  Publishers Weekly
„Palliser continues to show his versatilit in this well-written, complicated satire, which accurately skewers many aspects of the book trade. Mixing various narrative forms and styles, he begins his story with the obituary of a Scottish scientist, follows with an account of a train accident that might have resulted in a murder, and ends with a book review. The narratives in between are concerned with arcane literary theories, questions of plagiarism, murders similar to those attributed to Jack the Ripper, and a behind-the-scenes look at two weekly television series, all of which touch on the theme of betrayal. In turns humorous, macabre, and mysterious, this literary pastiche will exhaust all but the most dedicated readers. For comprehensive fiction collections.“ - Nancy Pearl

„Charles Palliser's novels keep improving on me. His first and probably best-known work, 1989's The Quincunx, is a dense Victorian pastiche, recalling Dickens and Collins as it charts the rising and falling (but mostly falling) fortunes of an innocent boy and his rather foolish mother as they become entangled in a decades-old conspiracy of hidden wills, secret paternities, shady financial schemes and the occasional murder. The Quincunx is an accomplished novel but also a rather chilly one. Palliser's period recreation is pitch-perfect, but he takes far too much pleasure in educating his readers. A good half of The Quincunx's generous page-count is given over to (admittedly fascinating) lectures about the inner workings of some obscure aspect of life in England in the 19th century--the secret society of sewer-combers, who make their living by sifting offal for discarded cash and valuables; the intricate pecking order that governs the downstairs sections of a grand house; the brutal, almost murderous conditions inflicted on unwanted, illegitimate, or inconvenient children dumped in so-called 'boarding schools' by heartless guardians. More problematic than the frequent info-dumps, however, was Palliser's characterization, or lack thereof. My first reaction when I finished the novel last year was that, having worked so hard to come up with an intricate, fascinating plot, Palliser had quite forgotten to invent interesting characters for it to happen to. The reactions of The Quincunx's narrator to the injustices he witnesses and is subjected to are intriguingly realistic (especially given the novels Palliser is mimicking, which usually feature improbably perfect and saintly protagonists)--he is often selfish, unthinking, and impatient with the frailty of others--but he never exhibits a personality beyond this reactive one. Having done away with the Dickensian stereotype of the scrupulous, decent, affable young hero, Palliser doesn't develop his character beyond establishing his humanity.
All that said, there were some promising hints in The Quincunx of what Palliser might achieve later in his career--primarily in his eagerness to mix the stylistic conventions of the 19th century mystery with a more sophisticated and realistic understanding of human psychology, and with a healthy dollop of moral relativism. My second foray into Palliser's bibliography, his fourth and latest novel, The Unburied, confirmed my suspicions that Palliser was worth a second look. It is a tighter and more elegant mystery than The Quincunx, and pays closer attention to characterization (it also features a touching and thoughtful sub-plot about the lives of homosexuals in the 19th century). In between these two novels, Palliser wrote Betrayals (there's also a second novel, The Sensationalist, which I have yet to read), a playful and puzzling work, and for a while there one of the most delightful novels I had read in quite some time.
Betrayals opens with the obituary of a Scottish physician and expert on poisons. It then segues into a Christie-esque tale about a murder that takes place when a passenger train is halted by a snow-storm. From there we move on to a book review, and then to the bitter rantings of the cast-out former disciple of a half-mad philosopher. The diary of a madman, the letters of a self-important author, the confession of an entirely unrepentant politician-cum-novelist--all in all, ten interlinked stories, each touching on the central theme of betrayal but also on the telling of tales within tales, a satire of the British publishing establishment, literary theory, the rift between 'commercial' and 'artistic' authors, and the intersection between fiction and reality. The latter, in particular, seems to be Palliser's focus--the very human, and very dangerous, tendency to transform real life into fiction, and then to turn around and mistake fiction for the real thing.
Our narrators, naturally enough, are highly unreliable--covering their own tracks, influenced by personal or political considerations, outright lying or downright mad--but through their omissions, slips of tongue and inadvertent truths, we can make some progress towards solving the novel's mysteries. And there are mysteries--who led poor Mrs. Armitage to her death when she was separated from her fellow passengers? Who murdered prostitutes in Glasgow in the 1970s? Was Graham Speculand's attacker acting on behalf of Speculand's former mentor, Henri Galvanauskas, and was that attack related to other assaults on University of Glasgow professors at around the same time?--interspersed between the literary theory and literary satire and literary pastiche that make up the bulk of the novel. Each chapter--and even the appendix and the index of characters--sheds some partial light on the mysteries of the others while also obfuscating other mysteries which may have seemed solved. Betrayals is a puzzle, one whose solution is left largely to the readers to decipher.
In that respect, Palliser's novel puts me very strongly in mind of Mark Z. Danieleski's House of Leaves, a similarly puzzling and experimental novel published in 2000. In its essentials, House of Leaves is a classic ghost story--an estranged couple move into a house in the county with their two children, hoping that the new environment will help heal their marriage. Soon their marital problems are overshadowed by strange occurrences within the house--strange sounds, rooms that appear out of nowhere, moving walls. So far, so simple, but the father in this family is a photojournalist who was chronicling his family's move into their new house, and eventually cut the footage into a film. What we read is a commentary on the film written by a blind old man (assuming that the film ever existed in the first place). Or rather, we read the old man's commentary plus the notes of the man who finds and becomes consumed by the commentary after the old man's death (assuming that the old man ever existed in the first place) plus the notes of the man's editors (assuming that the man ever existed in the first place). Add a boatload of footnotes, and footnotes to some of the footnotes, and bizarre typographic games, and you get a weird, weird, weird book. And, of course, no solution to the central mystery of what, exactly, was in the house, and what happened to the novel's other narrators, the old man and the younger one. As Palliser does in Betrayals, Danielewski leaves the final unraveling of his mystery to his readers, and peppers his narrative with clues that only the most attentive, observant, and obsessed of them will understand or even notice.
It's not at all surprising to discover that House of Leaves has developed a cult following, and that a vibrant online community exists to discuss the novel's themes, ferret out clues and suggest solutions to its mystery. Everyone loves a mystery, and everyone loves being the person who solves the mystery. The emotional kick we get out of advancing even one step closer to a solution outweighs the almost certain knowledge that that solution probably doesn't exist--that Danielewski was more interested in creating the illusion of profundity than in paying off his elaborate setup. Danieleski's chosen genre, however, allows him to play these sorts of games with his readers--the most horrifying revelation possible is, after all, the discovery that there is going to be no revelation. At the core of horror is the recognition that it is possible for ordinary people to stumble obliviously into the middle of some terrible and ancient drama, become inextricably embroiled in it, suffer terribly and perhaps even lose their lives, and never find out why it happened or what it was all about. Terrible things can happen to us for no reason and there is nothing we can do to prevent or stop them--what could be more horrifying than this simple truth?
Betrayals, however, is written as a mystery--several mysteries, as I have said. The rules of this genre are different--almost diametrically opposed to the rules of horror. In mystery fiction, there has to be a reason and a solution. Palliser plays a very dangerous game with Betrayals, undermining his readers' expectations of logical solutions and tied-up loose ends after first building up those very expectations by writing within the conventions of the genre. And as for asking the readers to be their own detectives, while obviously the degree to which one is willing to do so is highly subjective, I think Palliser goes too far. Most readers will eventually be frustrated by the investigation they must complete in order for the novel to come together--if, indeed, such a coming-together is even possible (obviously, I'm writing from personal experience. I came a certain distance towards solving Betrayals' mysteries and then stopped, unwilling to commit more of my time and energy to a task that, I suspect, is not finite. If anyone reading this review has come further and has insights they'd like to share, I would be only too pleased to read them).
Like Kate Atkinson's Case Histories, Michael Chabon's The Final Solution, or the second season of Veronica Mars, Betrayals uses the outer trappings of the mystery genre to do something that is not entirely related to that genre. And like those other works, it is only partially successful. Perhaps more than any other genre, mystery is boxed in by its rules and conventions, and I have yet to encounter a work that managed to break those rules and still succeed as a genre piece. Which may very well be Palliser's topic, and his compensation for readers left without a solution at the novel's end. Those parts of the novel not concerned with laying out mysteries or offering hints towards their solution are for the most part engaged in the discussion of two dichotomies--the rift between commercial and literary fiction, and the difference between mysteries in real life and mysteries in fiction. The former is obviously addressed by the fact that the novel's playful and experimental structure encompasses the most obvious pastiche of early 20th century mystery writers (in both this respect and in the connections that it draws between its disparate chapters, Betrayals is highly reminiscent of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, although again, I think the comparison highlights why combining this style with a mystery story might not be a good idea), the latter by the novel's longest chapter. The chapter is narrated in diary form by Sholto McTweed, a bookstore clerk who doesn't understand why anyone would want to read about something that didn't really happen, and who truly believes that the characters in a television cop show are being murdered in front of him. Sholto strikes up an unlikely friendship with philosophy professor Horatio Quaife, who grades real-life murders based on their literary merit, and objects to the use of poison because Sayers and Christie have done it to death. In the background, a serial murderer is terrorizing Glasgow, and at least two television shows have ongoing mystery plots which Sholto and Horatio try to solve. The point, apparently, is that real-life murders are at the same time more complicated and less elaborate than fictional ones.
It's a point that Palliser makes well and with subtlety, but it is not, in itself, a particularly clever, interesting, or satisfying one. It's all very well to say that a realistic, or a literary (two terms that mean completely different, and often diametrically opposed, things) mystery can't have a plain solution, but once you've made that point, what's left of your novel? In the end, one can't help but wonder whether it is Palliser who is the traitor, although he seems to be betraying himself as well as his readers--in its desire to step out of the bounds of genre, his fiction becomes self-immolating, and after an exciting beginning made up of several cracking good yarns, the novel starts dragging toward the middle and sadly never quite recovers itself. Which is probably a strange preamble to saying that I genuinely enjoyed reading Betrayals, and that I do recommend it. Whether or not the solution exists, Palliser has clearly grasped the key to creating a successful illusion of its existence--there are enough fun details in the novel to at least partially obscure the fact that it doesn't work as a whole. Betrayals is an imperfectly executed but fascinating experiment, and one that I think would benefit from a greater readership (although I wouldn't be surprised to discover that as many readers despise it as love it). There is a small sub-class of novels that work best as a topic of communal discussion. House of Leaves is one of them, and I think Betrayals might be one too (it is the novel's misfortune to have been published in the days of the internet's infancy). In the meantime, I'll keep looking for a novel that truly achieves a blend between the rules of mystery writing and the wider world of literary experimentation, and keep Veronica Mars' first season on hand to keep me company while I look.“ - Abigail Nussbaum

Charles Palliser, The Sensationist, Ballantine Books, 1992.

"Beginning a tormented search for anonymous sensual pleasure, David, a man obsessed with women, pursues a trail of aimless conquest and the intimacy of strangers.“

„An English computer programmer is drawn into an obsessive, erotic affair in this emotionless novel.“ -  Publishers Weekly

„What does a writer do for an encore when his first book, The Quincunx ( LJ 12/89), was an epic re-creation of a 19th-century English novel? Palliser returns with a slim volume that owes more to Kafka than Dickens. The titular sensationist is a modern everyman named David who takes an unspecified job in a nameless city. He relieves the emptiness of his life with episodes of furtive sex and drug-induced euphoria until he meets Lucy, a mercurial artist with a young daughter. Passion and cruelty mingle as they strive for an unachievable intimacy, their relationship and lives ultimately unraveling when David loses his job due to a "system failure" and Lucy's destructiveness turns tragic. Told in a fragmented style that echoes its theme, this novel convincingly explores system failures of the personal and social varieties. Recommended.“ - Lawrence Rungren

„Many readers know Charles Palliser for only one book. But what a book.
Occasionally a writer—like John Irving, say—is said to be the Charles Dickens of our era, creating fictional worlds with large casts of eccentric characters resolving great moral and emotional issues with intricate plots and coincidences. But Palliser's The Quincunx recreates the entire Victorian world of Dickens, both in its detail and in its style, while still being a page-turner for a modern readership.
It's surprising to discover Charles Palliser was born an American, near Boston, since his works are so quintessentially British. But he was educated mainly abroad after the age of ten, residing in England for the most part. He attended Oxford and taught at university in Scotland, England and then back in the U.S., before setting in London. His first published works were articles on English and American literature. A couple of plays were produced for stage and radio in the early 1980s.
The Quincunx was his first novel, having taken a dozen years to research, write and publish. It was first published in Scotland in 1989 but soon became a worldwide phenomenon, quite deservedly. The novel has an unimaginably complex plot that nonetheless catches hold of the reader, involves him in the main character's story, takes him through more highs and lows than a dozen roller coasters, and then, unbelievably—but believably, if you know what I mean—comes together beautifully. Like Dickens or Wilkie Collins on speed or whatever the latest drug for such comparisons is today.
Palliser's next work of fiction, The Sensationalist (1991), was a modernist novella about a sexually obsessed computer worker. Reviews were mixed, admiring Palliser's plotting but decrying his over-intellectualization and lack of emotion.
The Betrayals (1995) was a better-received mystery novel written in a variety of genre-mixing styles.
The Unburied (1999), to the relief of many critics, returned to the Victorian era with several murder mysteries actually, taking place in three periods of British history and being addressed from the perspective of 1881. The interweaving of the stories and the multitude of characters make it all frustratingly complicated and, unfortunately, the brilliant but cold plotting fails to engage the reader's sympathies with any of the people involved, a mistake Wilkie Collins or Dickens never made.
But it still intrigues, making Palliser a writer one can always count on for something interesting and different every time out.“