Michael Cox (1) (1948–2009)

A young girl living in high Victorian times is sent on a mysterious quest called The Great Task. Without much to go on the young girl by the name of Esperanza, or Alice as is her middle name and used throughout the novel, arrives at the large mansion Evenwood to become a ladies' maid to the mistress of the house. A large amount of mysteries surround this Lady Emily who from the very moment she meets Alice is seem to set on making our young protagonist a close friend and confidant. From there we slowly learn that all is not as it seems and intrigue and drama unfolds as allies and adversaries work against each other to vie for the rights to the Baronial title and the property of Evenwood that comes with it. Readers who read The Meaning of Night will find the contents immediately familiar and will rapidly figure out what is happening and where things will be going.

The story is told diary style where Alice speaks to us as directly as an unnamed confidant, something which does not quite work because of the volumes of letters and anecdotes, naturally to be included in a diary, that do not add anything to the story and make the reader skip the endless dialog and ruminations. Most of the attraction of the novel lies in its atmosphere and depiction of the mid to late 19th century. Michael Cox does a good job of using appropriately dated dialog throughout and describes the locales and people with strikingly believable detail.

Unfortunately a lot of the events and interpersonal interaction doesn't stick together convincingly. Most strangely of all is the sense that the protagonist doesn't quite speak with a female voice. It is as if Michael Cox could not quite get the tone and content right of feminine dialog, although there is nothing definite that stands out. Besides a lot of actions by characters which do not make sense, there appear to be a lot of dangling facts that are never explained. A cab driver that seems to play an important role but is never further used in the book, a mentally retarded boy who somehow figures out without explanation who is behind the death of his mother and other such mismatched details make the novel difficult to get through.… (more)

The definitive collection of ghost stories as we've come to know them in the Western world. Cox and Gilbert had five criteria for selecting the tales herein: "each story should reveal to the reader a spectacle of the returning dead, or their agents, and their actions; there must be a dramatic interaction between the living and the dead, more often than not with the intention of frightening or unsettling the reader; the story must exhibit clear literary quality (not as subjectively vague a condition as it might sound); there must be a definable Englishness about the story, by which we generally understand English settings, English characters and institutions, and qualities (both stylistic and thematic) representative of the English ghost-story tradition as a whole; and finally, for not entirely practical reasons, the story must be relatively short."

Naturally, some works by prominent American writers like Henry James ("The Friends of the Friends"), Mary E. Wilkins ("The Lost Ghost") and Edith Wharton ("Mr. Jones") found their way into these pages. They stand alongside works by virtually every major British author of ghost stories, from Sheridan Le Fanu ("Squire Toby's Will") to M.R. James ("Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad"), from Oliver Onions ("The Cigarette Case") to Robert Aickman ("The Cicerones"). Some of the tales, like Algernon Blackwood's "The Empty House," describe ghostly phenomena with an observant detachment, as a parapsychologist might record data inside a real-life haunted house; others, like Somerset Maugham's "The Taipan" and Walter de la Mare's "Bad Company," are examples of what critic/anthologist David G. Hartwell called the "overtly moral" horror story. Still others are just skin-crawling reminders of our fleeting mortality, like Richard Middleton's "On the Brighton Road" (my favorite story of the entire volume).

Essential.… (more)

After his mother's death, Edward Glyver discovers some secrets from her past which lead him to believe he is the true heir to the wealthy Lord Tansor. The problem is, his old school nemesis, Phoebus Daunt, has inserted himself into Lord Tansor's life, becoming his adopted son, thereby positioning himself to inherit the Tansor fortune. Of course, Edward cannot simply lie back and allow this to happen, and murder seems to be the only answer.

This is a Victorian novel, set in 19th century Britain. I'd added it to my wishlist quite a few years ago after seeing it recommended somewhere and have had the audio sitting on my shelf for quite a while as well. It's long and somewhat daunting, and so I'd put off reading it until now. As many Victorian novels tend to be, it's long, rather depressing, and includes a lot of overly descriptive qualities. I appreciate the writing that goes into such novels, but I can only read one every so often. This had a good basic storyline: some mystery and intrigue, murder, love, etc. The main character of Edward was someone that I was just never sure whether or not to trust or whether or not he was reliable. He wasn't necessarily very likeable and was a bit full of himself, yet as a reader I felt I had to root for him. I liked this story, but the sheer length of it, with all the bogged down details, made it somewhat of a slog for me to get through. But then again, that's often what you get with a Victorian novel. For me, had it been half its length, I would've liked it more.… (more)