THE QUINCUNX

This 1989 novel was recommended to me by my brother many years ago.  Only last month did I finally pick it up and embark on the journey through its 938 pages.  If only I had known what delights it held in store, but I don't know how long it would have taken me to read it if I had attempted it prior to retirement.  I read it day and night, snatching minutes here and there, because it drew me onward irresistibly, with unpredictable twists even unto the end.

The Quincunx is not a book I would recommend for everyone.  And I do not even feel qualified to summarize or explain all the reasons I love it.  So I have borrowed a review from the website goodread.com and several reader appraisals for you to peruse if you so desire.

The 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."

Now for reader comments:

"If every other novel was like this it would be terrible. I'd never leave the house. I'd call my office : "Sorry, can't make it today, I have 450 pages to finish, I'm sure you'll understand, put it down as a family emergency" and eventually they'd email me - "you're fired" - but I wouldn't read the email. My cat would have to become feral. Empires might tumble, Bob Dylan might be chosen as the next Pope; I wouldn't notice."

"At first I thought this was an imitation of a Victorian novel, then a complete recreation of every Victorian novel, and finally I decided it was a parody of and commentary on the Victorian novel. It had every Victorian trope imaginable: the lost inheritance, the fatherless hero, the consumptive beauty, the abandoned manor, the mysterious break-in, the lost birth certificate, the evil money-hungry miser, the intolerable boys' school, the nightmarish insane asylum, the missing will, the charming crook, the grave robber, the poor starving governess, the vermin-ridden slums, and so on and so on, all packed into one frustrating yet compelling plot. At the climax comes the obligatory wedding, only it doesn't play out the way Dickens' versions did. It's absorbing, despite the occasional and annoyingly heavy-handed Victorianisms -- when you can practically hear the ominous music in the background -- which you have to forgive, because they're actually part of the whole parody/send-up. Upshot: a fun read and lit class rolled into one."

"The Victorian novel reborn, but without so many boring bits."

"This was a wonderful book, full of twists, turns and revelations up until the very end. Incredibly well researched and completely realized, down to the dialects and the slime of 19th century London sewers. In the best traditions of the era, Palliser gives us horrifying stories of poverty, betrayal, vengeance, Justice sought and denied, inheritances lost, stolen, regained, stolen again, forbidden loves, "unfortunate circumstances" resulting in illegitimate and unknown descendants, genteel ladies declining genteelly into drugs and prostitution, street philosophers of vivid eloquence, flash thieves and grasping moneylenders. With almost 800 pages of small type in the hardback edition, you certainly get your money's worth (though I borrowed mine from our little library). Not necessarily a book to get lost in and devour in a few sittings, but definitely one to come back to regularly and to look forward to."

I would love to hear from any of you that accept the challenge this book presents.  But I bet I won't hear from you for at least a month!