Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land

A intriguing novel that deals with the suposed discovery of a novel by Lord Byron. Hidden away by his daughter Ada, it's hidden message resonates with a modern day woman. Well written, with the surface message nicely playing off the deeper, more compelling message about family. Skillfully done 'literary' novel and well worth your time.

The spectacular success of Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code" and "Angels & Demons," in which codes figure prominently as plot devises, has paved the way for such delights as "The Evening Land," a new wave that ratchets the concept from the field of popular fiction to the next level, one that may well introduce new generations to the classic romanticism of Byron, Shelley, et. al. Crowley imagines that a novel written by Byron was encoded by his daughter Ada in order to preserve it from destruction by her mother, who was fanatical about privacy issues. These papers, having lain unread in an old trunk since 1852, are newly discovered and have now caught the interest of feminist scholars posting information about Ada on their website. Crowley employs the conceit of a novel within a novel wherein chapters of Byron's novel alternate with the emails of the women who have become fixated on breaking the novel's code, and thereby cleverly interweaving their parallel lives. Byron's purported novel could stand alone as an entertaining work of fiction. As Crowley tells it, Ali is the first Byronic hero, his life a remarkable illustration of Byron's adventures as an exile. Moldering castles, beastly aristocrats, obsessive love, and horrors aplenty await an Albanian shepherd boy forced to claim an English birthright. Likewise, the picture of Thea's and Alex's relationship and the scandalous back story of Alex's father that emerge through e-mail is plainly brilliant. Crowley deftly inhabits the individual voices of his wildly disparate characters and will entrance you to the end.

Although I take issue with what some reviewers here have said--that this is Crowley's best book (no way, that's "Little, Big")--I think that "Lord Byron's Novel" is certainly one of the two or three best novels of this year. It really is extraordinary and audacious: a novel-within-a-novel written entirely in the idiom of 19th century England--punctuated by a epistolary novel written by electronic mail! What the hell? This is bizarre stuff, and it doesn't always work, but for the most part it absolutely does, and the book is incredibly entertaining and inventive. From the Polanski-like contemporary father to the Satanic Lord Sane in Byron's lost novel, there are some extremely memorable characters here...quite honestly, I was thrilled by the whole novel.

"The Evening Land" is indeed another great novel by Crowley. Other authors (including, arguably, Crowley himself) have written novels about modern characters making extraordinary discoveries both historical and personal as they pore over ancient manuscripts--but here, the novel for the most part IS the manuscript, and it is quite a story. To write an entire novel in the voice of Lord Byron takes some remarkable audacity, and Crowley pulls it off. The story is thrilling and pretty hilarious--like this bit, right after "Byron's" protagonist Ali has been arrested for murder: "...For the Law has undoubted Majesty--and that Majesty is not diminished when we observe the Law's wig askew, or its waistcoat misbuttoned; nor in that we have seen the Law drunk at the Fair, or upon the public road..." It's these sort of cheerful, sarcastic, offhand pleasures that make the novel-within-a-novel such a pleasure to read. And the end of that novel, the last few paragraphs, in which its title is finally explained, are some of the more oddly haunting and unexpectedly emotional paragraphs I've read in recent memory. This book is full of surprises and pleasures, large and small. (Especially look out for certainly anagrammatical secrets hidden in a few places...some characters are more than who they seem, though most readers will miss it...)

The story of a long-lost manuscript of Lord Byron's coming to light, told in documents from several time periods. The lion's share of the book is the lost novel itself, a headlong, poignant Gothic tale leavened by sharp satirical digressions. Crowley impossibly manages to recreate the tone, mannerisms and mindset of Byron's most appealing voice, that of his letters and late comic poetry. The chapters of the novel are intercut with documents from two other time periods: that of Byron's daughter Ada, separated from him in her infancy; and the present day, where the decoders of the manuscript discover parallels between Byron's, Ada's and their own lives. The different layers play off of one another subtly and significantly, making a fourth story from the blending of the three. (Though this is an amazing achievement and a thrilling read, I don't see how anyone could say it's Crowley's best novel, which is surely 1981's "Little, Big".)