The Wrong Box

By: Robert L. Stevenson

Narrated by: Peter Newcombe Joyce

Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's summary

Victorian humour generally doesn't translate well across time. The Wrong Box is one of the exceptions. The plot revolves around the supposed death of Joseph Finsbury, who, as a youth, with his brother Masterman, joined a tontine - a scheme whereby each entrant pays a fixed amount and the sum total, with interest, is given to the one who lives the longest.

At the beginning of the story, there are three survivors and then two - the Finsbury brothers. Joseph is guardian to two boys and a girl, Morris, John and Julia. He was responsible for the boys' legacy of £30,000 and invested it unwisely in his failing leather business. The money has all but disappeared, and on reaching adulthood they want their inheritance back! Uncle Joe must be kept alive at all costs. Then there is a train crash....

The novel was either ignored or strongly criticised when first published, not least one suspects because of the irreverent attitude to death and its attendant rituals, subjects which commanded huge respect and veneration almost amounting to obsession from the Victorians. It is, however, a hugely entertaining story with a convoluted, complicated plot that can defy comprehension - but it is of no matter!

A cast of gloriously eccentric characters certainly had a comic effect on one notable literary figure of the period. "I laughed over it dementedly when I read it. That man [Stevenson] has only one lung but he makes you laugh with your whole inside." (Rudyard Kipling)

Public Domain (P)2012 Assembled Stories

This Is A Test

If the following quotations strike you as funny, you will probably enjoy this book as much as I did:

1. “No man of self-respect can stand by and hear his alias insulted.”

2. “What I don’t like is the total disappearance of an uncle. Not business-like.”

3. “How does a gentleman dispose of a dead body, honestly come by?”

4. “Disguise myself on Sunday? How little you understand my principles.”

Not that there isn’t more than a little Victorian financial jargon to be overcome and, for one used to the quicker pacing of P. G. Wodehouse, the story can seem long-ish in spots. But it is supremely, inarguably, overwhelmingly funny. The examples above are one-liners, but the give-and-take of dialogue yields even higher hilarity--especially when cousin Michael is drunk. As always, Peter Joyce does a superb job at the mic. Beyond giving each character in this crowded cast their own vigorous, individual voice, he reads the story in the exact spirit in which it was written.

My only real quibble is with the organization. Served up in three 2-hour slabs and a final hour-and-a-half coda, there’s nary a chapter break to be seen or heard; yet the PDF I found online contains 16 such divisions. Maybe missing chapters is appropriate for a tale where so many other things get mislaid.

A dark, brilliant farce

The Wrong Box is one of the most darkly funny stories I've ever read. And for it to have been written by Robert Louis Stevenson seems nearly a miracle. Of course Stevenson was far more than the author of "boy's books" like Treasure Island and Kidnapped. (I'm not knocking those: I re-read them nearly every year and wonder anew at their brilliant characters and swashbuckling plots.) He wrote many serious and adult-oriented stories, like The Suicide Club and his South Sea Tales, which I'm only now beginning to read. But nothing prepared me for The Wrong Box.

The humor is as close to the gallows as it can get. Much of the action involves a badly mauled body that keeps getting moved from one container to another. There are cousins, hilariously distinct in personality, who scheme against each other for a large fortune either may inherit (but not both). Or, maybe more accurately, one of them schemes, and the other, a cheerful and high-functioning drunk, counter-schemes in self-defense. It's all played out at breakneck speed and with plot twists worthy of the most over-the-top farce.

Peter Joyce reads it with delightful brio, getting heaps of mileage out of the vividly contrasting characters. I listened to it with great pleasure, and it expanded my awareness of what Stevenson was capable of.

A Fun Frolicking Farce!

A real comedic sleeper from this Treasurer Island author. Loved it even more the second reading as I better understood the subplots and the (often outrageousl and funny) interactions of the various characters with each other. Each main characteri is memorable and quite sympathetic despite their shortcomings. The English dialog was 19th century but quite modern and the narrator is marvelous. The story is a charming and uplifting adventure about a very missing body...