The Quincunx
To be brief: John grows up in Regency England to discover that an accident of birth has made him the central figure in an ancient and bitter dispute that has cost the life of more than one member of his family and threatens his own. He and his mother are in grave danger and he learns that they will be safe only if he can gain possession of a lost document. Finding it would give him the chance of becoming hugely wealthy, but the relatives who would lose out need him to die to prevent that.
To be brief: John grows up in Regency England to discover that an accident of birth has made him the central figure in an ancient and bitter dispute that has cost the life of more than one member of his family and threatens his own. He and his mother are in grave danger and he learns that they will be safe only if he can gain possession of a lost document. Finding it would give him the chance of becoming hugely wealthy, but the relatives who would lose out need him to die to prevent that. [This text is on the website.]In more detail and with a few spoilers: When the story begins, John is living with his mother and their servant in an isolated village in England. He realises they are in hiding, but his mother will explain nothing. She will not even tell him who his father is. He encounters a girl of his own age, Henrietta, who lives in a big country-house nearby. Her fate, he will learn, is strangely entangled with his own and both children are linked to the mysterious symbol of the quincunx which John finds amongst his mother’s possessions. It is also in the coat-of-arms of Henrietta’s guardians, and John will find this baffling clue again and again as he tries to unravel the complex riddle into which he has been born. Through a series of mischances, the hiding-place of John and his mother is betrayed to the people who want them dead. They flee to London where, tricked and robbed, they are quickly reduced to penury. There follows a downward spiral into pain and humiliation: They lodge with a man whose secret nocturnal activities arouse John’s suspicions and when he follows him one night, he finds that his unease is more than justified: the man is part of a gang that pursues a criminal and deeply disturbing means of earning money.Escaping one horror for another, John suffers at a brutal boarding-school while his mother falls into the hands of cruel exploiters. They are briefly reunited in the worst slum in London, but he has found her too late. John, at thirteen, is now alone and penniless in this vast and pitiless city. He has not even solved the mystery of who his father is.He is a brave and resourceful boy, however, and, driven by the desire for justice—or is it revenge?—he sets out to discover the truth. In the course of his quest he unwittingly joins a gang of thieves and then is imprisoned in a madhouse where he has a dismaying encounter with someone he has longed to meet. In this place of madness and rage, John finds reason and calm and learns facts about his antecedents, but they raise more questions: Was his mother’s husband his father? And was he a murderer? At this low point John is reborn through a tragic death and is rescued by an impoverished family who owe him nothing but a debt of guilt. He joins them in earning his living by scavenging in the ancient sewers of the metropolis and for the next few years he dreams of wealth and vengeance as he labours in the city’s filth.One day he discovers that the key to everything he is seeking lies in the Mayfair mansion of wealthy aristocrats he knows are his closest relatives. With a daring plan in mind, he gets work in the household as a servant on the lowest rung of the hierarchy. There he meets Henrietta again—the girl he encountered years before and childishly loved. Both of them are endangered by the bitter conflict between the powerful and ruthless individuals to whom they are related.What John has been through has hardened and disillusioned him and yet he can still fall prey to deception. More surprises and betrayals await him as he approaches his goal. He might win in a court of law, but the price of his victory may be much greater than he realises.
“[I]n 1990, neo-Victorian literature made a leap forward -- or backward -- into an unusually complete reconstruction of language, themes and plot with Charles Palliser's The Quincunx. Palliser used Wilkie Collins (The Moonstone) merely as his template, not as his source, for an old-fashioned sensational novel set in Victorian times. And though it may be heresy to say it, Palliser's novel is better than anything Collins wrote.” Toronto Globe and Mail
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”.
“A gripping mystery novel written in 1989 which brilliantly evokes early nineteenth century obsession with property, inheritance, class and family and memorably describes precarious Victorian life in all the strata of London society from grand houses to the sewers.” The Guardian
“[A] brilliant and entertaining pastiche of the mid-nineteenth-century novel” The Times
“[A] Borgesian feat of sustained imaginative anachronism, the fictional equivalent of Colonial Williamsburg. For this is not an ironic parody a la Barth, not an echo of Eco, but a genuine reproduction of a full-bodied 19th-century page-turner of a novel, set in late Regency England, thick with characters of all classes, with plots, counterplots, forebodings, reversals and interpolated tales. … You read the first page and down you wonderfully fall, into a long, large, wide, full world of fiction.” New York Times
“An epic quest for wealth and vengeance … its appeal is that of a tremendous intellectual puzzle.” The Times
“[A] a flawless reworking of a Victorian novel … The Quincunx is also an extremely clever puzzle. … This book may send you crazy, but it is a remarkable achievement.” Cressida Connolly, The Guardian
“Marvelously skillful … Readers with their own ample yen for teasing order out of misery can hardly do better than to step inside The Quincunx.” USA Today
“This is a rich, harrowing and eminently satisfying conundrum of a book.” Seattle Times
“[A] a flawless reworking of a Victorian novel … The Quincunx is also an extremely clever puzzle. … This book may send you crazy, but it is a remarkable achievement.” Cressida Connolly, The Guardian
“Occasionally Henry James tussles with Dickens to gain control of Charles Palliser’s inspired quill pen … Magnificent – gripping and beautifully written; the sort of book that sends you into a trance of pleasure” The Independent