2014-07-17 · in Books · 198 words

I was rather intrigued by the idea of writing a Victorian novel on a computer. One of the unforeseen consequences of this, however, was that I didn't notice how long the book was becoming.

From the author's comments at the end — in paperback form, it's nearly 1200 pages.

At the surface level, this is a pastiche Dickensian thriller, giving a whirlwind tour of the seamier side of London in the 1820s — but it's really a ferociously complicated multiple-viewpoints mystery along the lines of An Instance of the Fingerpost, and it's written using a mathematically-constrained structure in the same way as Life A User's Manual. This is an extremely impressive piece of work, designed to reward rereading, and there's a lot that I didn't pick up the first time through. I was particularly struck this time by John's behaviour in the final chapter; not one to read, bleary-eyed, late at night!

Many of the mysteries are discussed (but not necessarily solved) in a long discussion thread about The Quincunx on Simon Morris's blog — don't read it until you've completed the novel at least once, though. If ever there was a book that needed a wiki for annotations…