The Quincunx

The Quincunx #1-5

by Charles Palliser

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.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery, Historical, Gothic, Victorian, British Literature

787 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Charles Palliser (born December 11, 1947) is an American-born, British-based novelist. He is the elder brother of the late author and freelance journalist Marcus Palliser.

Born in New England, Palliser is an American citizen, but has lived in the United Kingdom since the age of three. He attended Oxford University in 1967 to read English Language and Literature, and took a First in June 1970. He was awarded the B. Litt. in 1975 for a dissertation on Modernist fiction.

From 1974 until 1990, Palliser was a Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. He was the first Deputy Editor of The Literary Review when it was founded in 1979. He taught creative writing during the Spring semester of 1986 at Rutgers University in New Jersey. In 1990 he gave up his university post to become a full-time writer when his first novel, The Quincunx, became an international best-seller. He has published four novels which have been translated into a dozen languages.

Palliser has also written for the theatre, radio, and television. His stage play, Week Nothing, toured Scotland in 1980. His 90 minute radio play, The Journal of Simon Owen, was commissioned by the BBC and twice broadcast on Radio 4 in June, 1982. His short TV film, Obsessions: Writing, was broadcast by the BBC and published by BBC Publications in 1991. Most recently, his short radio play, Artist with Designs, was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 21 February 2004.

He teaches occasionally for the Arvon Foundation, the Skyros Institute, London University, the London Metropolitan University, and Middlesex University. He was Writer in Residence at Poitiers University in 1997.

In 1991, The Quincunx was awarded the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters which is given for the best first novel published in North America. The Unburied was nominated for the 2001 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
Since 1990 he has written the Introduction to a Penguin Classics edition of the Sherlock Holmes stories, the Foreword to a new French translation of Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone published by Editions Phebus, and other articles on 19th century and contemporary fiction. He is a past member of the long-running North London Writers circle.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

Anyway, fortunately, most novels aren't either this good or this long, so we can live reasonably normal lives.

The Quincunx involves lots of delicious Victorian squalor, detail upon detail of filth and horror, the bilgewaters floweth and the sewers burst forth, there are villains, people have goitres, there are beatings, and I think there's a little donkey in there somewhere.

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

What if Charles Dickens were a postmodernist writer? Would he have been capable to write The Quincunx? The stylization is ideal.

Loomed at us from the shadows like a theatrical show: the drawn faces of the very poor, the laughing faces of those in funds or already drunk, but always, in one form or another, misery and fear and shame and desperation, whether clothed in rags or in tawdry finery, and everywhere a profligacy of children – children of all ages, children in tatters, dirty, with unkempt hair, their chests pinched inwards and their legs bowed, and with running sores on their faces or on their limbs that were visible through their rags; children running, fighting, stealing, swarming in the kennels.

Beginning with the early childhood Charles Palliser keeps pitilessly driving his hero into the darkest of all the corners…

I understood what I had to do, though my conscience and my stomach alike revolted against it. Perhaps it was fortunate that I had little time to reflect – beyond the conviction that if I failed to seize this chance, I would die – because I needed to act while the candle still burned. And so I began with excessive haste to try to raise the body and lift it over the side of the coffin. After some minutes of struggling I realized that my panic-stricken actions were achieving nothing except further to exhaust me. I forced myself to pause until my thumping heart had quietened and I had considered my next step rationally.

And then, in the end, the author, like some Deus ex machina, abruptly jerks his protagonist out of his bottomless misery…
But in the process of stumbling through the mazes and labyrinths of misfortune and escaping from the meanest rattraps the hero turns sophisticatedly cynical…
The Quincunx is a mystery novel with just a little postmodern twist in it – the reader must find the solution to the mystery on one’s own.
God saves those who save themselves.

[Shovelmonkey1 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cor blimey guv'nor that was a long old read. Weightier than a bag of coal and with more pages than her majesty's coronation. I view my current love of this sort of Victorian era homage with the highest amusement for, despite having recently read and enjoyed The Crimson Petal and the White and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and now The Quincunx, I am yet to read the books which these so lovingly ape. Not a dash of Dickens or a jot of James has passed my eyeballs.

And frankly, after over 1000 pages of novel written in the tiniest of fonts I think my eyeballs need a damn good rest. This is a good book for those of you out there who want complexity, density and longevity in a read. Oh yes, you should buy a large bag and get used to toting this around for at least a month... perhaps even longer. My bag carrying arm is now weirdly over-developed as a result of the additional weight. For those of you who might wish to kick to death the author who spins out a yarn so long that it makes War and Peace look like a comic strip, well this is not the book for you.

I first learned the term Quincunx watching Supernatural which is proof that beneath the superficiality of watching it for the moistened pout of Jenson Ackles, I am also inadvertantly being educated at the same time.

Five families (the Huffams, Palphrimonds, Mompessons, Maliphants and the scheming Clothiers) form the Quincunx or 5 spot pattern which is the key to this long running mystery as one precocious young man inherits a document and strives to piece together his family history and regain his birth right while surviving on the streets of London in an increasingly destitute state. Urchins, orphans, evil villains swooping by in horse drawn carriages, Work houses, prostitution, insanity and villainy are all present and illuminated by gas light and Lucifers in this condensing of all the things Victorian - so condensed that this is the Campbell's soup of Victoriana.

In summary, a battle of wills over a will, if you will.

[mark monday · Rating 4 out of 5]

a mysterious and elaborate narrative done in the classic Dickens style. stays true to the form, particularly in its almost monomaniacal obsession with money and property. the extensive research is obvious and helps to make the era vivid and completely real. characterizations were surprisingly flat for such an immense tome... and unfortunately, that includes not only the intriguing supporting cast but the primary characters of son and mother. i also have to say that i was let down by the curiously drab ending... the various activities by the incredibly large number of villains made me long for justice, revenge, just anything, really. wish-fulfillment should never be the goal of any reader but it's hard to avoid wishing for some kind of payback if the catastrophes that befall sympathetic characters are so deviously engineered yet so banally evil... and there certainly was no wish fulfillment in this novel. sigh.

all that said, and drab ending aside, this is a rich and nourishing novel. i read the last third all through one long night and into the next day. sorry, work, i was sick that day.

[Jason Reeser · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was a kid, I fell in love with these great big, old, aromatic tomes called "classics". J.F. Cooper was an early favorite. And of course, Charles Dickens was not far behind. I had no friends whatsoever who seemed to be able to enjoy sitting down with a slow, fascinating read like "Barnaby Rudge" or "David Copperfield" or "The Last of the Mohicans". But that didn't stop me from reading more and more books like them.

Fast-forward to my early twenties. I was at a bookstore, and found this beautiful artwork on the dust jacket of this very thick book by an author I had never heard of: Charles Palliser. The name of the book was just as beautiful as the artwork, and just as intriguing: The Quincunx. Paging through it, I decided it must be an old classic I had never previously seen. Yet when I looked at the copyright, I saw it was a modern novel. It was on the discount rack, and I decided I give it a try for a few bucks.

What a fortunate day that was.

Some books can be read without the slightest investment of your senses. Like reading through the window pane of a bookstore. You see the words, you enjoy the story, but you never get through the glass. Other books will draw you in a few feet. You dip into them, satisfied to taste a familiar treat, or smell an exotic location. You step away from the book and those little impressions stick with you for the rest of the afternoon. But there are rare occasions when something else entirely happens.

Opening the Quincunx was magical, and I could feel immediately that I had not only stepped into the book, but I pushed along far enough so that I could not see the opening of the book, and the room in which I was reading it. No matter that I put the book down to eat supper, or laid it aside to sleep. I never really got out of that book. Even now, twenty years after the fact, I can still put myself back in that world. It has a flavor all its own. The people there still brush by me in three-dimensional form. And the drama that unfolds within those pages will always keep me spellbound.

The book is full of characters that just never leave you. The story, like a Dickens book, is complex, mysterious, and full of adventure. There is a bitter-sweet romance, and villains, and everything you'd expect to find in Victorian London. There are country villages, graveyards, mansions, and yes, even an asylum for the insane.

I've no reason to go into the plot here. If you want, you can read the book's summary. Or read other reviews that go into the story. But this is one of the books for me that transcends its story. Is it a good story? One of the best. But that's not the point. The point is that if what I have described thus far fills you with visions of curling up with a book in your favorite reading corner while you shut out the world, this is the book for you. If it doesn't, we may not have too much in common. This is, after all, what I think reading is all about: the chance to climb into a book that is full of its own unique, yet familiar world, inhabited by startling characters who are caught up in a drama that leaves you full of wonder and despair and awe.

Ever since I've read this book, I have felt that something is wrong with a world where Charles Palliser is not only not regarded as a literary god, but most avid readers have never heard of him. What a shame that this is true.

I've read this twice. After the first time, I nearly forced my wife to read it, and though she is not a fan of fiction (she's a poet), she loved it. It is time for me to read this again. Maybe this winter, when I can sit under a blanket on the couch with the wind howling outside and a cup of coffee to keep me company.

[David Katzman · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a line about two-thirds of the way through The Quincunx that struck me as the perfect overarching summary and a central theme of the book. The narrator and main character writes, “So even here when I thought I had reached the very bottom, I found that there was nothing firm beneath my feet.” I’ll refer to this line again as I go through my evaluation of it.

The Quincunx is a compelling book published in 1989 and written by Charles Palliser that eloquently channels Charles Dickens. The writing is a pitch-perfect homage yet one that also reveals a far more brutal critique of Victorian England than Dickens ever portrayed.

John tells us the story of his childhood into adulthood, and the tragic events that follow him throughout his life. In the beginning, he is living with his mother and two servants in a house in a small town far from London. His mother has a mysterious history, and she refuses to tell him much about it. His father is missing or dead, and they live off of an income sent to them by a benefactor in London, a close friend of his family. We soon learn that his mother has some secret legal document that could lead them to great wealth or could lead to great danger, depending on what happens to the document. His mother occasionally references “enemies” who might pursue them if they are not careful and keep to themselves.

The death of their benefactor begins a downward slide for John and his mother that continues nearly to the end of the novel. John has the most horrible and horrifying events occur, and he barely manages to survive. Each time he does, you think this may begin his ascent, but instead he falls deeper and deeper. We experience through John the deepest dregs of poverty and what it means in Victorian England. You think Oliver Twist had it bad? You’ll see he got off lightly when you read The Quincunx. “So even here when I thought I had reached the very bottom, I found that there was nothing firm beneath my feet.”

There an obvious class critique inherent within The Quincunx: Palliser is critiquing how the economic system is rigged against the lower classes as well as how the wealthy manipulate the system to their advantage. But beyond these worthy messages, Palliser also points out that for both the poor and the wealthy, the system drives them to pure selfishness and untrustworthiness. It’s as though Palliser has predicted the primal nature of Trump. Trump is larger than himself, he is the core of Capitalism. His nature—pure selfish greed and falsehood—drives human nature…we must compete and succeed or we die. Social Darwinism is at the core of Capitalism and human civilization. Palliser lays bare the cruelty of this construct, and how it makes it extremely difficult to essentially be a generous, honest person who does valuable work that actually contributes to society. It’s possible, yet not only rare but also counterproductive. When John attempts to be noble, his actions at many of those times leave the reader incredibly frustrated. As if he is posing at doing the right thing when it puts his very life at risk. He struck me as unbearably naïve, as naïve as his own mother turned out to be. It seems that Palliser is positioning not goodness as the opposite of greed but rather naivete. He clearly does not support this world of cruel selfishness as Ayn Rand does with her ideology of “self-reliance” and selfishness. He’s not endorsing it. But he’s saying that power-hungry greed as exhibited by our President, by Putin, by the dictators of Saudi Arabia, by the CEOs of the oil companies who deny global warming, by the mafia, by all whose who advance themselves at the expense of others are the very natural outcome of the system in which society is founded. Gordon Gekko said it simply, “Greed is good.”

Now, if social critique were the only implication of The Quincunx then that would have been enough to tell a great story in the mode of Dickens, but Palliser takes us further, to a much more modern place. Post-modern, that is. It turns out by the time we get to the very end of the book, that not only was our narrator rather fluid in his personality, his morals and commitments, but even who he is is never quite resolved. Palliser introduces a great deal of ambiguity in the resolution, and the reader cannot feel confident that the greatest mysteries of the book were actually resolved. Identity, meaning, and fictional resolution are both social and narrative constructions. “So even here when I thought I had reached the very bottom, I found that there was nothing firm beneath my feet.” I can see how some readers might find the resolution disappointing or frustrating, but even so, I think after all we had been through it felt appropriate. It would have been too neat to tie everything up in a bow. In a sense the pursuit of “Equity” or “Justice,” which comes up repeatedly throughout the story is never-ending. And so is the pursuit of meaning.

Highly recommended.

[Tracy Staton · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Ian "Marvin" Graye]

A tatty old copy of this book arrived in the mail today (April 8, 2011).
It has particular significance to me, because I first read about it in a newspaper review of another book ("if you like The Quincunx, you will like" this other book).
I had never heard of this unusual word or the book, and promptly googled it.
I found Paul Bryant's GR review of it, and thus began a lifelong obsession with GR (and Paul Bryant).

[Jennifer (formerly Eccentric Muse) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Take Dickens, multiply the filth, poverty and desperation by five; multiply the cast of characters by five; multiply the number of plot twists, betrayals, double-triple-quadruple-and-quintuple-crosses by five; and multiply the multiple identities by five.

Add a speculative real estate scheme, a couple of phony front companies, a banking and credit crisis, a raft of lawyers, lenders, borrowers, beggars and stealers; and then run the whole thing through a sieve of the major moral, political, social, and economic philosophies of the last couple of thousand years exploring the big questions, ethical dilemmas, and theories of distributive justice, e.g.: When do the ends justify the means? Is life random or by design? Are human beings capable of altruism or motivated solely by self-interest? When is stealing and lying acceptable? What creates the greatest good: trickle-down economics or a welfare state? Is money the root of all evil?

Throw in opium addiction, prostitution, money-laundering, grave-robbing, duels, murders and mayhem; plunk it down in (extremely well-researched) early 19thC London, divide it up into five books representing five families, and spin it all around a will, a codicil to a will, another will, and an heir: a young boy, John, who doesn’t know who his father is and whose life, quite literally, depends on his ability to figure it all out … and you have The Quincunx.

[Jonathan K (Max Outlier) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading this epic story is like trudging through mud, the details and characters like a recipe for Mexican mole sauce! Tedious, I decuded its not worth the effort especially with nearly 800 pages of 9 point size text!

[Allison · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had very high hopes for this novel--the author is obviously highly imaginative and has great potential talent (atmosphere is arguably the main character in this novel, and he has obviously spent much time and energy devoted to researching his subject)--however, this first novel, overall, I found hideously disappointing. Whether it is read as a parody or recreation of classic Victorian novels, it is just severely lacking in some essential areas.
The plot, while sufficiently twisted and complicated, is executed in such a way that the pacing is entirely off, and somehow the reader is never fully engaged in either the plot or the characters. I found myself unable to fully engage with any of the characters, and since most of them are intentionally despicable, I think this is a serious shortcoming. Prepare yourself for immersion in late 19th C. English land law. The astute reader will have figured out ahead of time many of the 'surprise' plot twists, while the main character will alternate between piecing together some obscure threads out of little evidence, and completely missing some of the more obvious conclusions. This just results in the feeling of heavy-handed contrivance on the part of the author.
More than the first half of the novel plods along with excruciating, boring detail, while the circumstances of the main characters just becomes worse and more desperate--even when you think things can't get more depressing. It becomes a bit oppressing--while failing to reveal any more of the "secrets" which propel the plot. I was unable to engage in the action until around page 465. The ending is a complete disappointment as well, after 780-odd pages of redundant detail, the reader is left unsatisfied as to the few aspects of the plot that you can manage to care about. Many aspects are left unresolved, and the novel abruptly ends before the 'justice' sought throughout the novel is even accomplished. What happens to peripheral characters is nothing more than a footnote. It almost feels like a first novel in a series, but without a follow-up.
Overall, I would think the novel will lose any casual readers at the early stages of the novel, and considering the disappointing ending, I would not even recommend it to those committed readers who might finish it. I would recommend this novel only to the most devoted readers of modern-day historical fiction.

[Jason Nel · Rating 5 out of 5]

How can you read The Quincunx and not give it "Five" Stars

[Fiona · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m going to put this book and myself out of our collective misery and mark it as DNF. I just can’t go on! I enjoyed it up to a point but during the episodes in London, I suddenly felt overwhelmed and bored by the sheer wordiness of it. I’m well versed in what Victorian London was like and Palliser clearly researched the subject thoroughly but the laborious attention paid to the finest detail, little of it important or even relevant to the storyline, led me to no longer care what happens. It’s been staring at me from my bookshelves since I put it aside for a break at page 402, end of Part III. I’m sending it to a better home now - a charity bookshop where hopefully someone more appreciative of it will no doubt be delighted to find it.

2 stars reflects my lack of enjoyment rather than the quality of the writing.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story begins with a young boy, named John, who lives with his mother, Mary, in an English village. They are not wealthy but they are not poor either, and so they are able to live quietly and quite comfortably. As he grows up John comes to realise that the way they live is not normal and that his mother is keeping secrets; that there must be reasons why she is so very protective of him, why he isn’t allowed to play with other children, why anyone who comes to their door is unwelcome.

When a relative he has never met dies – and after he has broken more than one of his mother’s rules – things go terribly wrong for Mary and John. They lose what small capital they had, Mary comes to believe that they are no longer safe in their home, and so mother and son set out for London.

Things go wrong again, and Mary does not know who they can trust; who is really her friend and who is in the employ of the man she believes to be her enemy?

The plot is much too elaborate to explain, but it spins around a simple scrap of paper: the codicil to a will written half a century earlier. The will and the codicil had implications for five families; they had been written for unhappy reasons in unhappy circumstances, and they had created greed, hatred, madness and murder in five generations. They affected John, but he didn’t know how, he didn’t who his father was, and he didn’t know who his friends and enemies were.

He did know that he was in danger, caught in a complicated conspiracy, and that he had to work out how to survive and claim the inheritance that he believed was his.

Every kind of character, every scenario, every setting, you might think of finding in a Victorian novel is to be found in this book.

Sometimes the plot lingers, but I found the details of day to day living and how practical problems were faced quite fascinating. At other times it rattles along, almost so quickly that I wished I might have spent a little more time with some places and people, though what happened next always captured my interest and didn’t allow me to miss the things that had gone by.

The plot is relentless, always focused on John’s story; mainly through his own first person account, broken only when he hears the stories of others and when an omniscient narrator steps from the shadows to show scenes that will affect John’s progress.

It’s construction is so elaborate and so clever.

The atmosphere is wonderful, and this really is the perfect book for dark winter evenings.

Imagine that Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens sat down together with all of the time in the world to create a masterpiece, drawing on their own greatest works and the great works of their contemporaries, each writing to their strengths and reining in the other’s weaknesses, and trying things they has never tried before, to wonderful effect.

This feels a little like that.

There really is everything you could want in a Victorian novel, and I caught echoes of many beloved stories. And then there are things that feel a little more modern but work so well: a narrator who may not be wholly reliable, questions that are left unanswered, an ending that lets the reader draw their own conclusion, and a structure that slowly moves into the light ….

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.

There are so many small but significant details. I spotted some of them but I am sure that I missed others, and that this is a novel that would reveal much more on a second reading.

It has failings. John and Mary could both, for different reasons, be infuriating. Occasionally a character or a situation was compromised a little for the sake of the plot. The later chapters were less subtle than what had come before. There was at least one unanswered question that needed an answer: the question of John’s parentage.

But, as a whole, The Quincunx worked wonderfully well.

It is more a book for the head than a book for the heat.

And yet I loved that quite near the end I came to realise that it was also a coming of age story.

I read it much more quickly that I thought I would. I had to keep turning the pages. I was intrigued. I had to know. I couldn’t quite explain how all of the pieces of the puzzle fit together, but I have a good idea, and I think that it works.

I was completely caught up in the world of this book, I miss it now that it is over, and I can’t help wondering about the lives of many of the characters I met beyond the pages of the book.

[Laurie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nearly 800 pages of a cross between Dickens-on-an-off-day and the "Series of Unfortunate Events" for adults. I suspended my disbelief for far too long, and what did I receive at the end? No clear answer to the ultimate question of the protagonist's parentage, and a bleaker-than-bleak worldview which isn't even logical. The lengths the author went to in letting us know that there was no pattern or higher meaning to the "hero"'s struggles and suffering was in itself far too fraught with coincidence to be credible. A young man is persecuted literally from one end of England to the other, and every single person he meets is part of a vast conspiracy to do him harm. Not one charitable stranger emerges who doesn't know something about him to his or her own advantage. Good grief. This sat on my shelf for 10 years. I should have sold it unread.

[Martin · Rating 1 out of 5]

please, please don't waste your time, this is over 1000 pages of tripe.! The Author tries to be too clever, claiming this is an attempt to "play with the conventions of a victorian novel". He appears to be an English Lit professor and is a great example of why University academics sometimes need a good kicking!
The story is boring, the characters neither believable or interesting, Dickens did it first and did it better, why the hell Pallister bothered is beyond me. What is particularly irritating is that there is probably a good book buried in here somewhere, at half the length and told in a more straightforward way this would have been a good read, as the man can write, but this is not that book unfortunately.

[Marigold · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite books ever! I read it a few years ago, then loaned it to a friend who returned it - I forgot she even had it! - so after hearing her rave about it, I decided I had to re-read it, & I loved it even more the 2nd time! If you like Dickens & other Victorian novels, you'll love it. It's a novel that takes you completely out of yourself & into early 1800s England. It's the story of young John, who may (or may not) be the lost heir to a great estate. His story involves murder, insanity, incest, & a tree full of relatives all fighting over the estate. He's kept safely hidden in the country by his mother until he's about 10 (his age is never actually revealed). The two are betrayed & discovered, & over the next 700 or so pages, John tries to outrun, outlast & outwit his wealthy & murderous relations. In the process he slowly learns the family history, meets a beautiful & mysterious girl, finds out who his true friends are, & learns a lot of very convoluted English inheritance/estate law! He also begins to develop a philosophy about the price & meaning of wealth, & starts to see how challenging it is to stick to his principles.

The first time I read it, I actually kept notes & as I went along, developed lots of bizarre theories about some of the central mysteries of the book. On second reading, it seemed much clearer to me - but there are still some ambiguities left at the end, that the reader gets to speculate about! Oooooh, I wonder if Palliser will ever write a sequel to this?! It's certainly worthy of one. A fascinating journey into another time & place - you won't want it to end!

[Kamakana · Rating 5 out of 5]

if you like this review, i now have website: www.michaelkamakana.com

.??? 90s: this is not a book i thought to like. very long, very family-epic… but then i started and could not stop. this is grown on the models of dickens and collins, this involves similar narrative elaboration, this uses beautiful irony and tragic misunderstanding. of dickens’ work, i think of this as great expectations. but, i do not know for certain: is this a post-modern? certainly it is too fun, too densely plotted, too self aware or self reflective, to be purely a modernist project. do not be intimidated by the page count: it is a compelling read that does, in fact, justify its length. i will read this again... (2010 have not yet reread 2016...)...

[Mosca · Rating 4 out of 5]

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This book of course sets out to recreate a traditional nineteenth century novel. The language, the plot curves, the characters, the settings, these elements all work admirably towards that end. If you are transported by historically accurate nineteenth century details; if you love very, very complex mysteries; if intrigues and the Gordian knots of family genealogies lure you; if the you are charmed by the reconstruction of pre-Victorian plot conventions, this book is definitely for you. The obvious scholarship that went into this work is clearly impressive.

There are also very compelling studies in pre-Victorian class structure, economy, and land speculation--with its attendant side effects and spin offs.

Many of the characters are well defined and endearing. So the cumulative whole of this book is worth your time.

But I, myself, have never been a big fan of mysteries; and although this book aspires to be more than simply a classic of the mystery genre, there are enough of the plot systems required for a mystery, included in this book, for The Quincunx to be compared effectively to that literary convention. And what I have always found tedious in mysteries is the denouement: that gathering in parlour while the great detective explains, to us, that “…the maidservant couldn’t possibly have killed the Viscount because she was in the conservatory while….”

Well about two-thirds of the way into this large book, an exhaustive sequence of denouements begins.

“Ah ha! So the countess was really the same woman who……….”
“So Exeter is really the grandson of……..”
“So the reason that Charles left the banquet so early was……”

These start slowly at first; but occur more frequently, and accelerate manically as the conclusion approaches. And because the plot twists, the mysteries, and the revelations are so labyrinthine—so, therefore, are the denouements. And, therefore, these explications become numerous, frequent, and tedious.

But many readers, I am certain, will very much enjoy the unraveling of this complex puzzle. And this process allowed a thorough and admirable investigation into human motivations and the results of our actions.

So for me this was not what I expected, but a worthwhile read. And it was tedious at times.

[Stephen P(who no longer can participate due to illness) · Rating 4 out of 5]

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[Eric_W · Rating 5 out of 5]

The quincunx is an arrangement of five items in a square based on a cross that was used for several five-domed Byzantine churches. It's also a terribly important design in a novel of five parts by Charles Palliser that is absolutely riveting. Set in England during the early nineteenth century, it is narrated by a child whose age we are never told, even as he grows older. His name changes also as he realizes he has been hidden to protect his life, for he is the direct descendant of a wealthy landowner who left him everything in a will and a peculiar codicil, and the land will revert to others upon his death. Palliser's book makes a grand Dickensian sweep through the slums and ballrooms of Victorian England. John begins to piece together the puzzle, but only after he and his mother are manipulated and schemed out of everything they own Friends turn out to be enemies and ostensible enemies become friends in a topsy-turvy world.

Palliser did extensive research into the period, and intricate detail lends marvelously to the setting. And what an environment. A rigid class system prevented any kind of upward social mobility. Women were to be seen, not heard. They had no skills, were prevented from getting any, and when destitute, turned to prostitution as virtually their only means of survival. Greed and corruption were pervasive.

Intricate legal mechanisms were devised by rich landowners to deprive the poor of whatever little land they owned; more machinations made things worse by driving the price o flab or down. "Close towns" were created by buying up "freeholders," whose houses were then destroyed; only certain people were then allowed to live in the new cottages that were built. This meant the landowner did not have to "pay the paritch," a form of tax that was used to provide welfare for the completely indigent, of which there were many.

Some of the jobs the poor were forced into are graphically depicted. The "shore-hunters," for example, climbed down into the sewers at night during low tide, working their way through the labyrinth of tunnels underneath London to the spots where the sewers washed most of their detritus. This was picked through for whatever coins might have fallen down drain holes and been swept toward the river by the rain. It was filthy, dangerous (the tides were capricious and one did not dare to be caught underground at high tide) and not very rewarding. Often it was all there was. If a dead body was found, it was the custom not to strip it for anything valuable (like clothes), because after the body washed into the river it would be scavenged by those who eked out their living in such a manner. Stripping the body would be considered "robbing them of their trade."

John finally learns the secrets of the wills and codicils and the details of the murder that had haunted his family. Beware! Once begun, this book is difficult to put down. It will also make you want to dig out Dickens again.

[Jonfaith · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the time of its release, my friends and I were all fascinated by Oliver Stone's film JFK. We'd watch it together and discuss such for hours, debating the motives and agency each suspect would have. This continued for many years and I'd wager if circumstances allowed such, we'd all still gather and view the film again. Most of us were never drawn to the literature surrounding the assassination, by which I mean the myriad accounts and theorists who created an additional universe of sinister possibility from that sunny afternoon in Dallas. By consensus our chief complaint was the too- tidy character of X, played with aplomb by Donald Sutherland. This walking Rosetta Stone meets Jim Garrison at Arlington National and proceeds to connect all the dots in Garrison's investigation. We'd groan with how connected it would thus appear. My problem with Quincunx was very similar. The primary characters would make impossibly stupid decisions, regroup and continue. This extends for 800 pages and about a dozen horrifying situations. Nearing collapse, the reader is more fortunate than John Huffam as a whole cadre of Donald Sutherlands step forward and reveal ALL the veiled areas of the multifaceted plot. I could deal with that. What was indigestible was the dearth of humor. There's hardly a crackle of hilarity in the entire tome. One would imagine this titular homage (John Huffam are Dickens' two middle names) to Dickens would contain some of the master's black mischief. This isn't the case.

I tip my hat to Kris and Aloha. I hectored them into reading this. I hope it wasn't painful.

[Anika · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was highly recommended to me by a person whose taste I usually share, but I can't get behind him on this one. After about 300 pages of meandering yet overstuffed plot, complex and uninteresting legal jargon, and some characters who made me literally want to throw the book across the room (the narrator's mother is a huge problem - as a character her only traits are her weakness, naivety, and incredible stupidity. Literally, one of the most frustrating and badly drawn characters I've ever encountered), I decided to flip to the back to see if at least it looked like it was going somewhere. What it looked like instead was that I was in for 800 pages of the same, although at least the mother dies at some point. Sorry, book, you've gotten enough of my time.

[Ceci · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a masterful novel, both a parody and a celebration of a Dickensian novel. It's set in Victorian London and teems with mysteries, strange enemies, colourful characters, great inheritance... It's an unputdownable, giant of a novel of great complexity and intelligence. It's one of those rare books you wish to read all over again once you've finished it -- despite its great lenght.

[Eliza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy Cow what a page turner, and it better freaken be at 700 something pages!!! I may have made a big mistake reading this now that school is back in session, I may not finish it till schools out. All that aside its really good. It feels like a really good Dickens with lots of crazy characters and twists and turns. Love it!!!

Now that I've finished it I'm a bit bummed with the ending. But then again how very Dickens. He seemed to have some trouble wrapping up his endings as well. Ah the same I still loved it!!

[Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is legit. Make sure you give it at least 400 pages before giving up. This is the only book I've ever said such a thing about. It was confusing to me at first, and remained confusing for a long time, but the plot builds such that when you get closer to the end, it's just revelation after revelation. The best way I could describe it is if Alexandre Dumas, Charles Dickens, and my 92-year-old Property professor from law school all got together and did salvia, and then wrote a book about the scores of interconnected lifetimes they experienced.

[Kate Sherrod · Rating 4 out of 5]

I suppose we could regard Charles Palliser's Quincunx as final proof that for every genre or great genre master of fiction, however obscure or archaic, there is not only someone who will attempt a pastiche of it/him, but sometimes there is even one who is very, very good at it. Charles Palliser is one of these, an otaku's otaku in the realm of... the nineteenth century social novel?

I didn't know there could be such a thing. Did you?

For Quincunx* is a Dickensian pastiche of the very highest order, though it goes Dickens one better, or at least earlier, by setting itself in Britain's late Regency (and therefore pre-Victorian by a good bit) period. And perhaps it takes the Dickens to 11 at the very least, both in terms of legal/inheritance wrangling as plot driver and of risible degrees and numbers of coincidences at least in that Dickens' and Palliser's Londons have hilariously small populations.

And there is still more to keep the 21st century reader chuckling, for about halfway through, when a certain heraldry puzzle assumes paramount importance, the penny drops and one realizes she is in fact reading a high quality prose version of a hidden object game. All that is missing is the frustrating experience of "breaking" the cursor by mis-clicking on too many objects, but then again, that could be substituted for by our young hero's continually narrowly escaping yet another assassination attempt -- or only sort of escaping, continually forced as he is to more or less respawn as the penniless, near-helpless, delerious, paranoid, starving waif that he is for most of the novel.

And why is this so? Because, as I said, property inheritance and greed are the great drivers of the plot. An ancient francophone family (lots of glorious surnames feature in this story: Umphraville, Palphramond, Mompesson!) whose possession of a profitable estate dates back, apparently, to the time of William the Conqueror and whose bloodline includes Plantagenet ancestry, fell on hard times a few generations before our hero (John Mellamphy, he who answers to oh so many other names as he grows up) was born has been shadow-fighting over different versions of the patriarch's will in addition to publicly battling it out in the Court of Chancery (shades of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, eh wot?). Depending on what document finally surfaces and is approved, one family could be turned off the estate in favor of, well, several others.

The plot is intricate and small details matter; like in playing a hidden object game, we have to scrutinize every scene with care, somewhat hampered by our guide through all of this, John of the Many Surnames, from whom Secrets Have Been Kept and whose life is perpetually both endangered and protected by different interests, depending on which will from which they would benefit.

All this and all the Dickensian social justice hand-wringing you could ask for, as we spend time with body snatchers, dishonest bankers and lawyers, out-and-out bandit gangs, "down below men" who make their living salvaging coins and other valuables that have fallen into the sewers, starving Victorian garment workers, and, every once in a while, the gentry living high and betting too much on cards and horses. Like you do.

If that sounds like something you might enjoy, you'll enjoy the hell out of this book. I did, even though I snickered a lot. Hey, snickering is good.

*And I absolutely wound up reading this one now because of Aliette de Bodard, whose Obsidian and Blood Aztec godpunk trilogy employs the visual device and term of "quincunx" - a five-fold cross, more or less - and every time I came across the term, I remembered that my mother had presented me with a battered but still nice hardcover edition of Quincunx and it was still the substantial base of my small but formidable tower of dead tree TBR. Brains are funny old things.

[Rossdavidh · Rating 1 out of 5]

After 452 pages, I refuse to read any more of "The Quincunx", by Charles Palliser. Here's why:

First off, it's 1191 pages long, so it's not as if I was almost done. Before explaining the other reasons, I should probably describe the book (so far, anyway).

It's intended, I think, to be in the tradition of Wilkie Collins, sometimes said to be the originator of the English detective novel. It is steeped in its time and place (England around 1800), and the author has obviously done his research (which may be his undoing, as we shall see). I appreciate this, and obviously the mere fact that it is a long book doesn't bother me or I wouldn't have bought it in the first place.

The narrator is a young boy, living with his mother, his father deceased and largely unknown to him. It becomes quickly apparent that he is at the center of a dispute of some sort regarding inheritance, and his mother is ill-equipped (either by intellect or by disposition) to protect him from the duelling claimants who have an interest in his being either (a) never discovered, or else (b) discovered, restored to his inheritance, and then killed.

The story begins with them living in moderate, but not modest circumstances, and through a series of betrayals and poor judgement the mother loses all their inheritance. By page 452, where I left off, they had finally been separated, her in a debtor's prison of sorts, and he sold to a farmer who works his lads like farm animals, feeding them from a trough and having a couple of the larger lads beat them with whips to keep them in line.

Which is hard enough to read, but he takes forever about it. It's one long, slow slide, not so much off a precipice as down a steep cliff, with the pain of every bump spelled out in several chapters. There's the lawyer who convinces his mother to invest all of her money in a fraudulent real estate scheme. The trusted family servant who absconds with the results of an auction of their furniture and other affects. The drunken family they stay with, who turn out to be corpse-snatchers.

The puppeteers, Pentecost and Silverlight, provide a moment of relief, debating the merits of laissez-faire capitalism vs. compassionate socialism between (or sometimes during) their Punch and Judy shows (to the bemusement of the audience). But they are swiftly snatched away, and the slide continues, into hunger and opium addiction and winter as the harbinger of death.

Ok, ok, I get it. Poor people in or around the year 1800 had it tough. And I don't mind a little of this. I think the problem may be that, in researching the time period, the author may have discovered countless ways in which poor people were exploited, which had not yet been utilized in fiction. Which is fine, but he doesn't need to subject us to every one of them.

So, I have decided, that is enough. There may be great things ahead, but I'm not going to slog through the 1191-452=739 pages left to get there. There are lots of books in the world. This one will remain unknown to me. It is said that Wilkie Collins' downfall was that he became too enamored of social issues, to the detriment of his thrillers, which no longer thrilled so much as preached. If it was the author's intent to pay homage to the best of Mr. Collins' work, he has unfortunately done so too completely, including flaws and faults as well as storytelling virtue. For me, enough.

[M.M. Bennetts · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review was originally published in The Christian Science Monitor.

Think, if you will, of an earlier age in the chronicles of English literature–an age when authors such as Dickens, Thackeray and Trollope flourished. Remember a period in which verbosity was no crime and a novel was needed to fill the long spare hours of autumn evenings. Recall that time when themes were veiled in multiple layers of plot and characters, that era in which an author might freely discourse with his reader.

It is to this previous epoch, more than to our own, that The Quincunx, Charles Palliser’s novel of early 19th-century England belongs.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘quincunx’ as ‘an arrangement or disposition of five objects so placed that the four occupy the corners, and the fifth the centre’. In the context of Palliser’s book, the quincunx is an heraldic device of five fleurs representing the five branches of a single family–the heirs of one Henry Huffam.

For a decade, the Huffam heirs have feuded, employing both legal and criminal means, for the control of a vast fortune, the disposition of which depends upon the suppression, destruction or revelation of a codicil to a will.

The central figure of Palliser’s quincunx is John Mellamphy. He is an child at the novel’s outset, with neither father nor surname, but the rightful heir under the terms of the codicil. His mother–the timid and trusting woman who holds the coveted codicil–is bilked of her small income through the machinations of her father-in-law. Desiring safety from their enemies, and seeking some measure of economic support, Mrs. Mellamphy takes her son to London. Instead of finding succor, she places herself and her son in further danger.

Swindled and humiliated, the Mellamphys are reduced to a life of meanest poverty, scrabbling a meagre living on the fringes of London’s depraved and criminal underworld. Mrs. Mellamphy finds release in drug addiction. Buffeted between despair and danger by foes bent on his destruction, the boy joins the ranks of the homeless, begging for bread, sleeping in doorways and gutted buildings. Doggedly, he pursues the truth of his paternity and the resolution to the issue of the codicil and the Huffam inheritance. But this is only the surface of the plot.

The author has peopled this dark realm of avarice and equity with vivid characters. In the style of Dickens, Palliser melds the metaphoric and realistic, creating a rich concert of humanity caught in the grip of universal, unfaltering truths.

Throughout this cathartic epic, Palliser’s tone and language remain locked in the Victorian aesthetic. His narrative voice is sharp and stark, slicing clear etchings of that world of glimmering half-light and distorted lime-lit shadows we glimpse in sepia daguerreotypes. It is a prose style more familiar to readers of Thackeray, lacking the sentimentality of Dickens.

As in Dickens’ Bleak House, The Quincunx explores the vast cavern of corruption and greed within the context of property and equity under the law. Like him, Palliser has woven the components of a gripping mystery into a substantial work of social, historical and literary merit.

The Quincunx disturbs, provokes, enthralls, enriches, entertains, and reveals truth. It is, indeed, a masterpiece.

[Candace · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am done. Five stars. Long and windy, knotted up family histories, inheritances, betrayals, greed and power, estate law and wills, so much London, and mostly the nasty bits you don't often read about. It's not perfect, most of the characters make you want to throttle them in some way, but intricately researched and planned, spirals upon webs of inter-connected plots and people that was so satisfying to see come together. I read nearly 1000 pages in a month so it tells me something. Like Bleak House and The Woman in White and a bunch of other things dashed in as well. I like Charles Palliser.