The Quincunx - Style

Style

The Quincunx was a surprise bestseller. It is notable for its portrayal of 19th century England, covering the breadth of society from the gentry to the poor and from provincial villages to metropolitan London, and its dealing with the eccentricities of English land law. In a review citing parallels with Great Expectations, Little Dorrit, Our Mutual Friend, Martin Chuzzlewit, The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby, Michael Malone has written that "Mr. Palliser appears to have set out not merely to write a Dickens novel but to write all Dickens novels". But Palliser looked beyond Dickens for his depiction of the social conditions, drawing on Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor.

J. Hillis Miller points out that "The conventions ... of Dickens’ novels, are made salient through parody and exaggeration, just as a postmodern building makes the fragility and artifice of those old styles evident..." But Palliser differs from Dickens in that there are "no benevolent father figure, no guiding Providence, almost no good people, no guarantee that justice will eventually be done, nothing, for the most part, but uncertainty and prolonged suffering. It is as though Palliser were saying: 'Let me show you what things were really like at that time'."

The book is deeply researched. For example, the plot turns on an aspect of inheritance law - the distinction between a fee simple and a base fee with a remainderman. Another crucial point is the timing of John Huffam's birth, indicated by reference to contemporary events such as the Ratcliff Highway murders, the Great Comet of 1811, Wellington's capture of Ciudad Rodrigo, and the passing of the Rose act determining how parish register entries should be made. On another level the hero's name hints that the author may have given him the same birth date as Charles John Huffam Dickens.