Synopses & Reviews
One of the most accomplished literary artists of our time, John Crowley has given us fiction that illuminates and astounds from the wonder and whimsy of
Little, Big to the poignancy and lyrical beauty of
The Translator. Now he turns his unique genius in a different direction to imagine the novel the great, haunted, and enigmatic Romantic poet Lord Byron never penned ... but very well might have.
Documents discovered in a rotting old trunk in an English storage room prove that the manuscript of a novel by Byron once existed, and that it was saved from destruction, read, and annotated by Ada, Countess of Lovelace, a brilliant mathematician and Byron's abandoned daughter, during the final, agonizing months of her young life. While the curious mystery of what became of the manuscript itself is explored, we are permitted to read it the whole of Byron's only novel beginning to end.
And what a novel it is a thrilling romance chock-full of treacheries and deceits, loves and fortunes gloriously gained and tragically lost; a tale of blood, vengeance, and mystery, of thrilling escapes and ruthless murder. Yet in the story of Ali the bastard son of the demonic Lord Sane, torn from his life in high Albania to be raised a proper, if penniless, English gentleman Ada finds gripping revelations of its author's hidden character, and glimpses into the secrets of his soul.
John Crowley's masterly creation is, in itself, a stunning and unprecedented act of literary impersonation. But Lord Byron's Novel is much more, weaving strands from different centuries into an extraordinary tapestry of loss and discovery, and the powerful, invisible threads that eternally bind parent to child. It is the story of a dying daughter's poignant attempt to understand the famous absent father she longed for to her last day, and the contemporary tale of the determined young woman who, by learning the secret of Byron's manuscript and Ada's devotion, reconnects with her own father, who was driven from her life by a crime as terrible as any Byron was accused of. John Crowley's novel is a wonder a modern masterwork that moves, enlightens, and satisfies on everylevel.
Review
"Crowley's...magnificent new novel is multilayered and convoluted, a story within a story within a story that spans three centuries." Library Journal
Review
"In an astounding display of scholarship and imagination, John Crowley has stitched together pieces of biography, literary history, textual criticism, computer science and cryptography." Washington Post
Review
"Crowley's use of three different devices Byron's work, a convincing piece of romantic fiction rich with thinly disguised autobiographical elements; Ada's annotations; and a series of e-mails exchanged in the present day adds up to an intriguing and multilayered whole." Booklist
Review
"Crowley's real achievement...is not a convincing imitation of Byron....[M]ore persuasive by far is the suffocating world of encryption and code, coincidence and conspiracy, paranoia and parapsychology that Crowley summons from his 19th-century documents and 21st-century decoders." Christopher Benfey, the New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
Spanning three centuries, Lord Byron's Novel interweaves three separate strands into one magnificent tale: the stories of a lost novel by Lord Byron, the daughter who tried to save it, and the woman who discovered her secret.
About the Author
John Crowley lives in the hills above the Connecticut River in northern Massachusetts with his wife and twin daughters. He is the author of the novels Daemonomania; Love and Sleep; Aegypt; Little, Big; The Deep; Beasts;Engine Summer; and The Translator, and the short fiction collection Novelties & Souvenirs.
Exclusive Essay
Read an exclusive essay by John Crowley