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.
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