The Meaning of Night is like a darker, more twisted Great Expectations, with a much less sympathetic and more unreliable narrator. There are a lot of layers of backstory and duplicity to be gotten through, and it can try the reader’s patience at times, but in the end, the payoff is excellent, and it’s a strangely satisfying story. The author’s ear for Victorian style is pitch-perfect, as might be expected from someone who’s devoted a lot of scholarly work to the ghost story writer MR James.