The Spectator
Falkner is a master of the art of suspense
A.N.Wilson, Daily Telegraph
What makes the book addictive, though, is ... its atmosphere, its whole perception of existence
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
'The Nebuly Coat' is one of the partly forgotten masterpieces of Edwardian fiction. Despite its obvious affinities with the work of Thomas Hardy in its setting, architectural detail and sense of slowly unfolding tragedy, Falkner's masterpiece is like no other. Its careful creation of setting and character add to the ever-darkening complexity of the central characters' obsessions and crimes, and make the whole an unforgetable reading experience.
Magnificent!
Magnificent!
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5 reviews
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful
An Overlooked Classic
16 Jun 2000
Format:Paperback
J. Meade Faulkner is best known for Moonfleet, which is often considered a children's classic (though it can be read with enjoyment by adults, too.) However, The Nebuly Coat is a classic of its own, truly meriting that overused epithet, sui generis.
If The Nebuly Coat fits into any category it is in that small class of perfect books. Faulkner was a beautiful, understated stylist with a gift for apt, humorous, and poignant characterization. He combined these gifts with a rare skill in plotting. In short, he was good at everything.
You might say this is a murder mystery, because it involves murder, and the book is certainly mysterious. In fact, you will never know just who did it, or if anyone did it. In one sense then the book is teasing. However, in another sense the book also concludes definitively; the reader feels that story has run its course even though the mystery remains.
I urge you to read this book. Look for a used copy or search for it at your library. It really is a special book.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
"The arch never sleeps, never sleeps"
30 Jan 2007
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
John Meade Falkner's 1903 cult classic THE NEBULY COAT has been the clear inspiration for many later Gothic British novels, most saliently Charles Palliser's THE QUINCUNX and (particularly) THE UNBURIED. It stands in a direct line of the Gothic and sensation traditions established by Hogg, Godwin, Collins, Le Fanu, and in particular Dickens: it will remind a reader most of EDWIN DROOD, but it also seems at the same time like no other other novel before it. Falkner explored his love of antiquarianism here to show the connections between an ancient abbey minster in a Dorset town and the aristocratic local peer, Lord Blandamer, whose heraldic symbol is the nebuly coat of arms of the title; a visiting London architect paid to restore the minster discovers that the baron's claim to the title may be in as much danger of collapse as the church itself. Falkner's portraiture of the rural Dorset folk has been compared to Hardy, although it often seems more aptly comparable to Gaskell, and does tend to go on (particularly after a major character dies midway through the narrative and Falkner seems to lose his narrative momentum). But the opening and closing thirds of the novel are absorbing, and his delineation of the three main characters--the stubborn architect Westray, the alcoholic church organist Sharnall, and the mysterious Lord Blandamer--is memorably accomplished. Best of all, he does a fine job of evoking that which a devotee of the Gothic most wants in his fiction, atmosphere, and the groaning slender arches of the Cullerne minster's tower greatly linger in the memory.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
A book for the ages
30 April 2011
Format:Paperback
Only the third (and final) of Falkner's novels, this is an astonishing book, as close to a perfect novel as I've read.
In plotting, language, internal balance and, most of all, in the psychological delineation of character, it's not quite like anything else. Time and again, a character says or acts in a way that's startling and unpredictable, yet each time there's that inner stab that tells you the choice is exactly right. The dialogue is convincing throughout.
Though there is one "Lord" present, this is not at all the English novel of the upper class. The story focuses on a small English town with a large, ancient church. The major character is an outsider, a young architect brought in to oversee repairs to the venerable structure. Like many later novels (especially American), it presents the town as an entity filled with constricted characters often acting out of base or minor motives. Yet unlike most such cases, Falkner does not present his characters as oddballs and one-dimensional toss-offs, but as people of small ambition acting as their temperament dictates. Falkner is intensely fond of his characters and forgiving of their sins, but he is clear on the damage they can do to one another.
His satirical stabs are often fall-out-of-your-chair funny, exquisitely exact in wording and example. His critical thrusts at the broad emotional sweep of so many 19th-century novels are spot-on, as he shows how it is the little things - the misunderstandings in everyday conversation, the failure to share basic assumptions - that so often motivate action, rather than some overreaching outlook or ambition.
His earlier two novels focused on a specific mystery, as was so often the case at that period. Here, the main mystery here is whether there really is a mystery (a metamystery, I suppose). Is this just a tale of a place or is there a motivating action in the background? And once mystery does begin to peep out, you're never quite sure if foul deeds have been done or if nature has simply taken its course.
Another nice touch: The church tower becomes a character in itself (it's arches even speak to the architect), much as the walls of Loudon do in Ken Russell's film "The Devils."
In plotting, language, internal balance and, most of all, in the psychological delineation of character, it's not quite like anything else. Time and again, a character says or acts in a way that's startling and unpredictable, yet each time there's that inner stab that tells you the choice is exactly right. The dialogue is convincing throughout.
Though there is one "Lord" present, this is not at all the English novel of the upper class. The story focuses on a small English town with a large, ancient church. The major character is an outsider, a young architect brought in to oversee repairs to the venerable structure. Like many later novels (especially American), it presents the town as an entity filled with constricted characters often acting out of base or minor motives. Yet unlike most such cases, Falkner does not present his characters as oddballs and one-dimensional toss-offs, but as people of small ambition acting as their temperament dictates. Falkner is intensely fond of his characters and forgiving of their sins, but he is clear on the damage they can do to one another.
His satirical stabs are often fall-out-of-your-chair funny, exquisitely exact in wording and example. His critical thrusts at the broad emotional sweep of so many 19th-century novels are spot-on, as he shows how it is the little things - the misunderstandings in everyday conversation, the failure to share basic assumptions - that so often motivate action, rather than some overreaching outlook or ambition.
His earlier two novels focused on a specific mystery, as was so often the case at that period. Here, the main mystery here is whether there really is a mystery (a metamystery, I suppose). Is this just a tale of a place or is there a motivating action in the background? And once mystery does begin to peep out, you're never quite sure if foul deeds have been done or if nature has simply taken its course.
Another nice touch: The church tower becomes a character in itself (it's arches even speak to the architect), much as the walls of Loudon do in Ken Russell's film "The Devils."
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