Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

DNF at 60%

I went into this book on the back of reading Piranesi. Having had a great experience with Clarke's writing I could think of nothing better than getting into another thousand pages of amazing characters, beautiful description, and hilarious dialogue.

How mistaken I was.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is one of the blandest experiences I have been subjected to whilst reading. The plot progression is painfully slow and the interesting characters that were present in Piranesi are painfully absent. Although the events take place over a number of years, it never feels like you are moving forward.

After meandering through one too many uninteresting and tedious conversations between the books many tiresome characters, drifting off and dreaming that I was reading something else, anything else, I decided to put the book down.

Don't let the unending stream of 5-star reviews fool you. This book might have been worth the read at the same length as Piranesi, but being forced to endure unending pages of paint-drying boredom was something that I refused to continue.

Do not recommend.

This book has it all: history, drama, magic, romance, conflict, action and touches of humor. There are interesting characters to root for or to hate. I really loved reading this and did not want it to end.

The story is set up as a rivalry between two magicians, Strange and Norell. Strange doesn't show up until a fourth of the way in, but you're already on his side before you meet him. Norrell is vain, secretive, paranoid, elitist, and cowardly. Plus he's a liar and a hypocrite who quietly sits by and takes no responsibility when his own action causes so much suffering. Strange on the other hand is self-involved, impulsive, and neglectful but also brave, witty, and resourceful. Much easier to like.

It's almost perfect but short of five stars for me because the rivalry story was not as tightly wound into the story of the actual villain as I would have liked. When it comes to the climatic moments of the story, heroic actions that should have been taken by Strange or Norrell go to other supporting characters, making it just short of perfectly satisfying. (There's nothing wrong with a book that doesn't go the conventional route with character development, it just didn't work for me in this particular case.)

It's been awhile since I was so enthralled by a novel, and a fantasy novel at that. It seemed like such a daunting read at first but the story weaved its spell after the first few pages. Slow-paced? Not when every sentence is such a delight to read. Complex characters, an intriguing magical system, period atmosphere, and a plot that unspools into darkness.

I finished!!!!

When I tell someone I couldn't get into Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad, they always tell me that you need to give 4 or 5 episodes until it gets really good. And I always say but if it was THAT good it would grab me right from the first episode.


I'm here to tell you that you need to give this book 2oo pages before it gets REALLY good and trust me its worth it.


MAGICAL.

This book was even better than I hoped! It seems a daunting read at first glance, but with the wit and quick pace, and the gorgeous lyrical prose, it goes by quickly. I adored the characters and the atmosphere!

I'd give this closer to 3 1/2 stars than three. But I can't give a book I came so close to giving up on as much as I did this one 4 stars. Though the writing is excellent and the world and characters brilliant, there just isn't much of a plot until the last few chapters.

I am very glad I stuck with it though. The end made the journey worth it.

I really want to like this book. It's got a great core concept. Magic has disappeared from the world, and the last to English magicians work to bring it back. Magic with a backdrop of Napoleonic era British aristocracy is a great place to start, but it really doesn't do much beyond that basic concept. The characters are okay, but nothing to write home about. The writing style, which feels like an old Dickens novel, but this make the characters feel stiff and unlikable. The plot is incredibly non-descript and runs WAY too long. The last third is quite good, with the personalities of the two magicians colliding and dark forces working behind them, but it takes so long to get to that point that I really have difficulty giving this book a wholehearted recommendation.

In addition, this book has intentionally frayed edges, which docs it one star.

I'd heard that the BBC were producing a show based on this book. That got me interested and I was ready for something unusual as well. This book is set in the late 1800s during the Napoleonic wars. Magic is a real thing but no one has been practicing it in England for hundreds of years. Until Mr. Norrell enters the scene.
This book is just over a thousand pages set in tiny type (my paperback copy, anyway). The pace is leisurely but the subject is interesting and the style is old-fashioned. So I was drawn in pretty quickly in the first few hundred pages. But trying to read this at night with tired eyes, reading glasses, and small type often meant that I'd only get through about ten pages at a time. I started this book in March, got to page 750 and decided I needed a break. That break included reading about seven other books.
And then Netflix picked up the BBC show. I watched the first two episodes and thought the show was great fun. So that got me all interested again and I wanted to finish the book before getting to a point in the show that was beyond where I'd read to in the story. Those last 250 pages were read pretty quickly and, indeed, the pace quickened considerably as well. I was glad I perservered. I'm about halfway through the show now and ready to continue watching. I think they've done an excellent job with the casting so far and the pace of the show is brisk.

Executive Summary: I had mixed feelings on the story, and disliked the vast majority of the characters. I enjoyed the ending though.

Audiobook: Simon Prebble is fantastic. He's the kind of narrator that adds something extra to the book. He made the slow parts of this book (of which there were many) a lot more bearable. He does a variety of voices and accents. He has great inflection with his normal reading voice too. He transitions between the story and footnotes seamlessly (probably better than I would had I been reading the text too). If you're going to do this book, audio is a great option. It's long though at 32 hours plus. You really get your money's worth with this one.

Full Review
This one has been on my radar for a few years. A friend of mine whose opinion on books I typically share really enjoyed it, especially in audio. I kept meaning to borrow it from him, but never got around to it. Then they released the mini-series last year, and I wanted to do the book first, but still never got to it. Audible had it on sale earlier t his month and I finally decided to pick it up and listen.

I was slow to get into it. Mr. Norrell is completely unlikable. I think that was intentional, but it didn't make the first 10 hour or so which were largely about him any better to listen to. Jonathan Strange and his wife were probably the only two characters I liked. Stephen, the butler wasn't bad too, but I generally despised (or was indifferent to) the rest. That always makes a read harder for me.

I like parts of the book, but every time I was getting into the story I'd hit another lull. I was never completely bored, but I found my attention wandering far more often than is normal for me.

I like some historical fiction, and this book reads a lot like that. In fact the magic was largely absent through much of the early goings. I think the highlight for me were the footnotes. They were often the best part of the story. We'd get a side story that was far more interesting than the main plot.

Overall I enjoyed parts of this book far more than others. I think if it had been shorter, or certain subplots had been removed entirely I would have given it another star. I can see why my friend liked it so much, but sadly I didn't share his opinion this time around. I still plan to check out the mini-series, but I'm not in a big hurry to do so.

What an odd book.

Phew. That took longer than it should have. The last 300 pages of this book seemed to drag on forever, though I'll admit that's probably more my fault than the book's. I read the first 700 pages so easily during the holidays that not being able to read for very long at a time made the last 300 pages go so slow.

This was a long book. A 1000 pages is a lot of words is a lot of information is a lot of time to keep a book interesting. I was never completely blown away by this book and I hardly ever felt like I really had to keep reading. It took its sweet time, which is fine, but also long. The whole thing with the footnotes felt very weird to me – I kept wondering throughout the book if those would turn out to be really important in the end and if I should pay attention or if they were supposed to be a fun addition. So meh, that felt unnecessary at times and at the same time I was sometimes left with so many questions. Sometimes the book felt like it was being long for the sake of being long because the more information you put in a book, the more interesting it becomes (no!!! stuff doesn't work like that!!!).

To me, this book was not fireworks.

It was, however, fun, well written and very original. The way magic and magicians were regarded in this book was great, very different from what I've read before. I was a huge fan of Strange and his story arc, becoming more independant, with his own ideas about magic and the way it should be handled. I thought the conversation he had with Norell before he left him was great, just as the way they acted around each other when Strange returned to England in the end. I liked the growth and the continuity in both the characters.
Also, there were some side(-ish) characters that I loved and that should have a special place in this review – Childermass, Arabella, Segundus: you were all lovely.

If I weigh the good against the meh of this book, the good wins. Maybe it could've been shorter or clearer and maybe the longness and vagueness are part of the charm. In general, this was good. Not I-want-to-scream-it-from-the-rooftops-fantastic, but nevertheless, good.
So yeah, to me it was clear this was definetely not 5 stars, but I'm a bit more tempted to give it 4 than 3.

((First time I actually posted a review on here. Hopefully I did okay.))

There were a few times I got bogged down a bit in everything (especially during the war), but other than that, excellent!

I stopped reading this about 1/2 way through quite some time ago as nothing was happening. Pages and pages of descriptions of people deciding what dinner party to go to that day or what tie to wear.
Then when the TV show was coming up I decided to read a bit more and finally, things started happening.
But I didn't care for the magic system. It seems to me that big magic, like moving a city from Europe to North America should require more effort than a spell to look in on some one remotely.
All in all, I didn't care much for it, it would have helped if it had been 1/2 has long.
It reminded me why I hated reading Dickens or Melville in high school.

A dear friend recommended this as honeymoon reading, and as soon as I was a chapter in, I was just so, so appreciative of how well she knows me :) As she told me, it's a mash-up of Austen's dry humor (set in Europe during the Napoleonic Wars) and delicious magical realism. I could not believe this book had been kicking around for just over a decade without me already enjoying it. I suppose someone's mileage might vary based on their level of appreciation for Austen and/or magical realism, but that would really leave me questioning whether they read for transportative pleasure or masochism. Life's short, but not too short to read these 800 pages.

Je crois qu'il s'agit de la deuxième ou troisième fois où j'ai commencé à lire ce long roman. J'ai lu plusieurs critiques qui confirmaient l'impression que j'avais gardé de ce livre : c'est lent, il ne se passe grand chose, et les digressions sont nombreuses. Mais cette fois, je suis allé au bout, et je ne le regrette pas. Là où je diverge des critiques que j'ai lues, c'est que je n'ai pas pensé “tout ça pour ça !” à la fin de ma lecture, bien au contraire. Même si le début (et même le milieu !) du roman est lent et qu'on ne comprend pas forcément où cela va nous amener, j'ai adoré la fin et j'ai finalement apprécié que tout cela ait été amené avec subtilité et en décrivant au préalable un univers précis et passionnant. Je ne sais pas si j'aurai le courage de relire ce pavé un jour, mais j'en garderai certainement un très bon souvenir.

I liked how the story started. Magic in the XVII century England is gone, however a group of theorists call themselves magicians because they dedicate their lives to the study of the art.

Then comes a real practitioner of magic, Mr Norrel, and demands the society to be disbanded. He finds them to be too presumptuous in calling themselves magicians, when in reality their nothing but scholars of magic. Why couldn't they just change they're name? They never claimed to possess any magical powers.

Up until now, there were two main characters, and it turns out that Mr Norrel is the actual protagonist, and the other two disappear all of a sudden. And this is where things starts to get really boring.

I was expecting to read magic/fantasy, but all I got was the struggles of a magician to get his art appreciated and put to good use in society. That is, social parties, political meetings, etc.

Amazing book till the ending. Seemed a little rushed and predictable. Can't wait for BBC adaptation!!

An enormous, ambitious historical fantasy that is hugely charming, often adorable. It's an epic (over 1,000 pages of tomeness), but it never feels weighty or bogged down. Instead, it's airy, light, fun, and constantly absorbing. It's written with such Jane Austeny humor that you can't help but become a bit infatuated with it, to laugh with it and to miss it when it's gone. I don't think I've ever read 1,000 pages so quickly. I yearned for it at work, or when I was out with friends. I read the last 400 pages in one bedsore-inducing marathon Saturday. I'm sad that I had to finish it.

First of all, huge kudos to Susanna Clarke. She's worldbuilt to the finest degree; creating an enormous, cohesive mystical and mysterious mythos that rivals Tolkien and Herbert. Kudos also because - unlike Tolkien and Herbert, who placed their worlds firmly beyond our reality - Clarke marries hers comfortably to our own; specifically, to a whole host of 19th century English traditions. This might be a very alternative reality, where England was once divided into a Northern and Southern kingdom, the former ruled by a magician-king in the 12th century. But it feels very, very embedded in actual history, and actual literary traditions from the period. Early portions of the book read like Georgian era comedies of manners - Pride and Prejudice and Magic! When the action moves to the Napoleonic wars, it turns into the Sharpe series. Later, it becomes Romantic, Byronic, mid-century fantasy horror: epistolary like Bram Stoker, Gothic and grotesque like Shelly. Throughout, some Arthurian hat-tips - once and future kings, King George III as a Fisher King, and a deep, Romantic connection (connexion!?) to the sublime mystery of Nature.

But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. Basically, the story follows the revival of modern English magic - in the form of an odd couple buddy movie. Mr. Norrell (played by Michael Gambon in my head) is an anti-social, curmudgeony, prim and prudish pedant. He's a Yorkshire gentleman and one of the first people, in the year 180-something, that can practice - rather than just study or talk about - magic. He moves to London intending to revive English magic; all the while stressing that it's important not to meddle with the darker, scarier, more unpredictable sorts of magic - fairies, and the Raven King, and all that. He's also sooooo boring, and reading of the various antics and social pickles he gets into is a source of constant delight and humor. Oh, how I loved Mr. Norrell sometimes, and how surprising he could be.

Later, he's joined by Jonathan Strange (obviously David Tennant) - who's younger, sexier, sillier, more sociable and more distractable. He's also probably a better talent at magic, even if he's all over the place. Strange gets invited by the various glitterati of 19th century British history - the Duke of Wellington, the Prime Minister - to solve Important Historical Problems (like Napoleon) using magic. Where Mr. Norrell (Normal?) is cautious, Strange jumps right in. Hilarity ensues (well, sort of). Some sadness too. Indeed, a great meta moment is when Strange - having suffered various slings and arrows of outrageous fortune - has become a bit Byronic. The writing here turns Shelly/Stoker/Byron-ish, and who else does Strange meet in the story than... Shelly and Byron!? Ha! (Too early for Stoker, I guess.)

The rest of the story follows from the Norrell/Strange dichotomy, though it's not entirely predictable. Yes, Norrell/Strange threaten to become the standard Disciplined Master/Rogue Pupil archetype (Obi-Wan/Anakin, kung fu master/kung fu student, etc.), but Clarke subverts this formula in interesting ways. And she never forgets her setting; this book is deeply connected to its traditions, both in form (her use of Georgian language and writing style) and content (the folk history of Ye Olde Englande and all its magickalness).

An absolute pleasure; highly recommended.

Edited to add: I should note that I didn't read any of the footnotes; thinking instead to get through the story first, and delve into the worldbuilding curlicues later. Reading some of the other reviews, it seems some of the 1-star people got fed up with too much footnoting.

This is not my kind of book, and I doubt that I'll ever reread it.

It's a very long and very fanciful book about magicians and fairies, set mainly in England in the early 19th century, and gives the impression of having been written at that time—being written in a deliberately old-fashioned style and with a deliberately old-fashioned view of magic and fairies, as though the author had never read any fantasy story written since the 19th century. She has put the 20th and 21st centuries out of her mind entirely in writing this book.

Clearly she has done plenty of research into history, geography, and the traditional roots of magical legend.

The story rambles on and on, digressing freely, and I felt obliged to follow it through, rather like the wedding guest listening to the Ancient Mariner. In the end there is what amounts to a happy ending, although the happiness seems oddly muted and the story ends without a bang.

I dislike the way magic is presented in this book. Magicians perform spells, but we never get to hear the spells or understand how they work in any way. Evidently the magicians understand more about it than we do, but we never get to share in their knowledge, the magic remains mysterious, and its limitations unknown; although it's extremely powerful and perhaps has no limitations. I don't approve of fiction in which anything you want to accomplish can be done with an unexplained spell; it strikes me as cheating. I prefer to read about magic that has rules and limitations and some kind of theoretical basis.

I also fail to be enchanted with the characters, which are well presented but curiously unappealing. Jonathan Strange is a relatively sympathetic character, but even he falls somewhat short of real likeability, perhaps because he's obsessively devoted to magic.

http://alchoi.com/2013/10/21/review-jonathan-strange-mr-norrell/

One of the best & most original fantasy books I've read. A must-read for any fantasy fan!

This is obviously Clarke's magnum opus and when it is good, it's amazing, but unfortunately for me there were many parts where the story dragged and the interesting and boring didn't balance out. This is a book where everything connects, even when you can't possibly see how at the time, and that in and of itself is impressive.

Strange book. Hard to grasp at first. The beginning was tough but towards the middle I was enjoying it. Not best book I've read but was good.

My mom has a thing about crows. She says that when she sees them, particularly in large groups in the spring, she sees it as a good omen. She says she feels like they talk to her when she passes. So I wasn't sure what to think when the mythology of this book saw ravens as good omens as well (I realize I'm conflating crows and ravens, which are so not the same thing, but I imagine my mom wouldn't recognize the difference). I'm taking it as evidence of how awesome she is. Weird, but awesome.

That's what I liked most about this book. I like the mythology and the magic. I want to say that it is similar to magical realism, almost, because the magic seems to behave without rules. Or rather, there are rules, we're just not privy to them, and there are people who think they are but they really don't know what they're talking about. It's what I felt was missing from books like Harry Potter, that make magic into a science, or rather what elementary school tells you what science is. There's Latin words and specific wand movements, and everything works very cleanly. In Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, magic is more like how science actually is, that there are rules written down and equations to make sense of it, but really there's so much mystery involved its scary. There's a kind of elegant mysticism about this kind of magic, which I quite like. Not to mention, some of the magic done is very cool and dramatic (I have a cinematic mind, so I have a tendency to grade the books I read on their potential for great movie moments).

As for the rest of it...well. When I complained about the slow pace on Tumblr, I received several anonymous assurances that the ending pays it off. I was told that all the backstory leading up to it is necessary for character development. It so is not. There are new characters still being introduced 3/4 of the way through! And really, its not like the title characters really evolve that much, I did not need 800 pages to tell me they're both full of themselves. I can easily look back on certain chunks and wonder why they were necessary. Even when the book does get to its best part, its still diverting down side roads and footnotes. The funny thing about those footnotes is that buried in there are some damn good stories. The history of the Raven King is really fascinating, and I suppose the reason why it was treated in that way is to show how his presence in this alternative universe is so commonplace that its not considered remarkable. Still, I felt a little cheated, that that was where the meat of the intrigue was and it was relegated to footnotes.

What I like though, what I really really like, is the way it handles marginalized groups and the issue of privilege. I feel like that's actually what this book is about when you get down to it. There are women in this book whose lives do not revolve around men, who have relationships with eachother, who are aware of their position in the world and are freaking pissed off about it. There's a black servant, who in some sense is the “model minority,” he's sophisticated and intelligent and wealthier than most white people he encounters, but he was born of slaves and knows his position in the world is precarious at best. There is Norrell's servant, who is intelligent and frank and never appreciated by Norrell for all his talent. All of these characters provide perspectives that their more privileged counterparts ignore.

Privilege is addressed in the obliviously arrogant way Strange and Norrell behave, as well as in the behavior of pretty much every other white male character, and a faerie who doesn't seem to understand the weight of his power. It illustrates perfectly that privilege isn't a bad thing in and of itself - Strange acknowledges that he can't blame the faerie that enchanted his wife, its just his way, and Stephen Black even apologizes to him as he's killing him, saying, "You intended nothing but kindness, I know" - but it makes people blind. This book is about humility and pride, and that it takes a lot more than just one smack in the face for people to recognize which they have and which they lack. As said, Strange and Norrell don't change. They save the day purely accidentally, because with everything they've been given, and all the power they claim to understand, it never occurs to them that there might be something going on much bigger than them, because it involves people that they view as much smaller than them. Strange gets it, sort of. It comes in how much he learns about about magic, and manifests in how he begins to trust women and servants in ways that other characters don't. But what does change more significantly is that the people around them realize they can't always rely on them, even if they are magicians.

I do think there's a lot to be gained from this book, so I can understand why its considered so significant. Is it really worth it though, all of it? Ehhhhhh. I am glad I read it, even though at times I wished I was getting started on my Animorphs reread instead. I'm a little disappointed that since I read it on the Kindle, I can't page through it aimlessly, because it does feel like that's what it more made for. There's a lot of tiny moments and gems that helped it along, but I just wish there were more of them.

Fantastic! Simply astounding!