Skip to main content

Chunkster (and TBR) challenge review: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Genre: Fantasy, alternative reality
Year of publication: 2004
Setting & time: England (mostly), Spain, Italy; Early 19th century

Mr. Norrell, a gentleman magician - the first to do genuine magic is several centuries - proves that magic has not disappeared from England and offers his assistance to the government in the fight against Napoleon. He is a very selfish man and in order to make sure no-one else can compete with him, he buys all the books on magic he can find and collects them in his well-guarded library, and prevents others from trying to do or learn magic. When another gentleman magician, Jonathan Strange, appears on the scene, Norrell is at first hostile, but eventually he accepts the young man as his apprentice. But that is only the beginning …

At a whopping 845 pages, this is the longest book I have read in quite a while, but unlike some other long books I have read (e.g. The Historian) it would have been very difficult to prune anything from it. The narrative is rich and imaginative and the story rolls on at a fairly even pace, but it is so well written and rich in detail that the pacing doesn't matter. This is not the kind of book one absolutely has to read and read and read until one drops, but rather one you can read a couple of chapters in, lay it aside for a day or two, and then continue, and the break isn’t going to affect your immersion in the story one little bit.

This is a cosy read, the kind of book one curls up with, anticipating something wonderful, which it delivers in spades. The well-defined characters become like one’s old friends, and like old friends, one gets impatient with them when they are being stupid or stubborn, but in the end they are forgiven because of the pleasure they have given.

Neither of the titular characters are completely likeable, although one tends to side with Strange, because of his openness and willingness to share information and train more magicians, which stands in clear contrast to the mistrustful selfishness of Mr. Norrell, who seems to want most of all to be the only magician in England. But while he is cast as a sometime antagonist to Strange, he isn’t the true villain of the book – that is left to a whimsical and malevolent being that likes to play with humans like they are toys but who doesn’t fully understand them.

This is an enchanting tale of magic, a a magical narrative about enchantment and illusion, and eventually a tale of heroism and sacrifice. The frequent footnotes provide interesting diversions and make the story a bit like a biography or an academic text – although in the best way possible. The world-building is flawless – based on historical Europe in the main points, in Clarke’s hands it becomes something and once exotic and familiar, strange and yet comfortable.

Highly recommended, a keeper. 5 stars.

P.S.
Apparently there is a film in the making. I hope it will do the book justice.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Icelandic folk-tale: The Laughing Merman

Icelanders not only believed in the existence of selkies, but also in mer-people. The mermaids were said to be very beautiful, while the mermen were supposed to be ugly as sin but very wise and able to see things others did not. O nce upon a time a farmer went out fishing and pulled up a merman. He tried to get the merman to talk to him but he would not answer, except to beg him to release him back into the sea, but this the farmer refused to do. The farmer rowed back to land, taking the captive merman with him. When he pulled up the boat on the shore, his wife came to him and greeted him with tenderness and kisses, which he received with pleasure. This made the merman laugh. Then the man’s dog came to him and greeted him tenderly in the way of dogs, by jumping up to him, but the farmer hit the dog. Again the merman laughed. Then the farmer walked up towards his house, but on the way he tripped over a tussock and hurt himself. He got angry and gave the tussock a good kicking. Then...
Post a Comment
Read more

Book 7: Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński (reading notes)

-This reads like fiction - prose more beautiful than one has come to expect from non-fiction and many of the chapters are structured like fiction stories. There is little continuity between most of the chapters, although some of the narratives or stories spread over more than one chapter. This is therefore more a collection of short narratives than a cohesive entirety. You could pick it up and read the chapters at random and still get a good sense of what is going on. -Here is an author who is not trying to find himself, recover from a broken heart, set a record, visit 30 countries in 3 weeks or build a perfectly enviable home in a perfectly enviable location, which is a rarity within travel literature, but of course Kapuściński was in Africa to work, and not to travel for spiritual, mental or entertainment purposes (he was the Polish Press Agency's Africa correspondent for nearly 30 years). -I have no way of knowing how well Kapuściński knew Africa - I have never been there...
Post a Comment
Read more

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...
Post a Comment
Read more