![]() ![]() Even the name of its central character, John Huffam, is lifted from Palliser’s great inspirer, Charles John Huffam Dickens, but so to describe The Quincunx is almost to belittle it. ![]() The Quincunx is ‘kind of Dickensian’ in the same way that the Taj Mahal is kind of a nifty tomb. Right up your street.’ Then, rather than handing it to me, he placed it on a table and backed away, as if he had lifted a family curse by passing it on to the innocent. ![]() I had to look it up too.) A master of the soft sell, he simply said, ‘Got this at a jumble sale. (A quincunx is a group of five objects arranged so that four form a square and a fifth sits in their centre, as on a dice. One night, a ‘friend’ – I use the term loosely – cast a cloud over my life of unmolested tranquillity by presenting me with The Quincunx by Charles Palliser. My friends bring books, which is, I suppose, why they’re my friends. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |