Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell: A Novel | Susanna Clarke | The Line Between the Mystical and the...

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell: A Novel | Susanna Clarke | Great book

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Jonathan Strange &...

	Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell: A Novel Susanna Clarke Tor Books, 2006 - 1024 pages average customer review:based on 727 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

At the dawn of the nineteenth century, two very different magicians emerge to change England?s history. In the year 1806, with the Napoleonic Wars raging on land and sea, most people believe magic to be long dead in England?until the reclusive Mr Norrell reveals his powers, and becomes a celebrity overnight.

Soon, another practicing magician comes forth: the young, handsome, and daring Jonathan Strange. He becomes Norrell?s student, and they join forces in the war against France. But Strange is increasingly drawn to the wildest, most perilous forms of magic, straining his partnership with Norrell, and putting at risk everything else he holds dear.

Time Magazine #1 Book of the Year « Book Sense Book of the Year « People Top Ten Books of the Year « Winner of the Hugo Award « A New York Times Notable Book of the Year « Salon.com Top Ten of 2004 «Winner of the World Fantasy Award « Nancy Pearl?s Top 12 Books of 2004 « Washington Post Book World?s Best of 2004 « Christian Science Monitor Best Fiction 2004 « San Francisco Chronicle Best Books of 2004 « Winner of the Locus Award for Best First Novel « Chicago Tribune Best of 2004 « Seattle Times 25 Best Books of 2004 « Atlanta Journal-Constitution Top 12 Books of 2004 « Village Voice ?Top Shelf? « Raleigh News & Observer Best of 2004 « Rocky Mountain News critics? favorites of 2004 « Kansas City Star 100 Newsworthy Books of 2004 « Fort Worth Star-Telegram 10 Best Books of 2004 « Hartford Courant Best Books of 2004

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The Line Between the Mystical and the Physical

There are few novels that can walk the line between the fantastic and the real, where the outstanding becomes inseparable from the common-place, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is one of these books. Susanna Clarke has succeeded in creating a 19th Century England full of magic and mystery, while still being anchored in the realities and histories of 19th Century Europe during the Napoleonic Wars. The novel can best be described as an alternative-history. In this world northern England was once ruled by a magician-king, referred to, among other names, as the Raven King. He is responsible for bringing magic to England, ruling for over 300 years before mysteriously disappearing.

The novel opens long after the departure of the Raven King, magicians are nothing more than glorified scholars, pouring over books about magic, unable themselves to preform any. Magic is gone from England and no one really understands how or why. The great acts of magic performed by the Raven King and the other great magicians has long been sequestered to books and fables. However, an old man appears and performs an extraordinary display of magic, sending all of England into an uproar.

The characters in the novel, on the surface appear rather stereotypical. Mr. Norrell is an old, scholarly magician bent on preserving tradition and pouring over his numerous tomes. His pupil, Jonathan Strange is young and brash, eager to push the boundaries of magic, to experiment rather than read about magical pursuits. However, as the novel wears on you discover each as a depth of character unlike their outward persona's. Each is driven by different fears and passions, and they both have much more in common than they realize.

The novel's greatest strength lies in how believable and tangible the world Mrs. Clarke portrays is brought to life. The novel is littered with footnotes outlining interesting facts and fables (some of which span multiple pages). These are never tedious and all serve to annunciate the "believability" of the story. In this fashion she reminds me of another great English author, J.R.R. Tolkien who went through great pains to add color and depth to his world, expanding upon small details, evening creating a language of his own. Mrs. Clarke also has a keen sense of mixing humor with drama, adding the right touch of levity at appropriate times. Her humor is very much like that of Jane Austen, poking fun at the social dilemmas gentleman and ladies found themselves in during the 19th century, where morality and social acceptability ran counter to emotions.

The novel is broken into three volumes, each segmented into many chapters, with few running more than twenty pages. This does a good job of making the 846 page novel easily digestible. This is Susanna Clarke's first novel and pacing is one issue she has yet to master. The novel lags during a few places (notably during the beginning and end of volume I), and the ending seems to flow in a torrent. However, it is very easy to get lost in the prose, which is succinct and well constructed. Her descriptions of magical acts are particularly well written, with metaphors that precisely illustrate the events at hand in perfect detail.

In the end this is a tremendous novel, one of the best constructed literary worlds I've had the pleasure of exploring.

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Great book

I can't believe I bought this for a dollar! Great book, especially if you only paid a dollar. My copy is not for sale, sorry.

Spreading the reach of British magic

Illustrations by Portia Rosenberg

This book I found purely at random as I walked through the fiction section at my local public library in search of reading material (one cannot go home empty-handed from a place where books are being given away!), starting at the front of the alphabet, hence the author's name beginning with C. Surprisingly, this book has many similarities to Pynchon's Mason & Dixon: A Novel, which I had just finished, in its massive size (700+ pages, surely a determining factor in discovering Clarke's book in a random shelf scan), its purported historicity, its seamless and matter-of-fact incorporation of fantastic elements in historical settings, its depiction of the relationship of two men who are both friends and co-workers in fast public projects, and in their gentle ironic humor.

Clarke's writing style is not so raucous as Pynchon's, but the fantastical nature perhaps elevated. Mr. Norrell is famed as the only "practical magician" in England, an honor he has diligently sought and brought upon himself by purchasing all the books on practical magic he can find (except one who will make his appearance later!) and by discouraging all others from practicing (sometimes with the help of lawyers). Norrell is a retiring, gloomy, private man, not given to public spectacles of magic, but desiring to use his magic for the national cause. He becomes his own federal bureaucracy as it were, working with the British government to help defeat the French on the continent.

Jonathan Strange is a young, vivacious man (Norrell's polar opposite) in pursuit of a woman he hopes to marry who has no notion of becoming a magician, practical or theoretical, until he meets with the character I introduced above who reads off a philosophy that Jonathan Strange will become the second great magician of the age. Drawn to Norrell in London, the two become master and pupil as Strange learns his craft, and partners in public works as Strange joins the British Army effort against the French.

Unlike Norrell, Strange hopes to spread the reach of British magic, and to learn more about its ancient past rooted in fairies and the "slave king" John Uskglass. In pursuit of this goal, Strange loses his wife, his sanity, his friendship with Norrell, and unlocks a chain of events that he can't control that ultimately ends up almost all for the good, and therein is the source of a 782-page novel.

Much like Pynchon, I find it hard to rate such a tree-killing effort as a classic, despite the quality and enjoyability of the results. Well worth reading as a potential classic, but that rating weighed against the commitment of time it requires drops it to the second level.

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Like and Hate

I waiver between liking this book (I'm only a few pages from the end, so I must like it enough to keep reading) and wishing I'd never bought it.

The plot meanders all over the place. There is no one distinct story. There are several places it could have ended.

My wish is that this was a series rather than a single book. With over 300,000 words there's plenty here for three books.

I'm amazed that Clarke managed to find an agent, much less a publisher. But, I see all those different editions and so many reviews, it must be okay.

Being a writer and knowing a lot of writers, we'd like to know what spell Clarke used to get this first "novel" published. It couldn't be the process the rest of us are going through.

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