Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

What a delicious surprise. This was ... quite unlike anything I was expecting. It works at so many levels: the characters, the setting, the story. The prose. Oh, the words:

The day of the visit was preceded by stormy weather; rain had made long ragged pools in the bare, brown fields; wet roofs were like cold stone mirrors; and Mr. Honeyfoot's post-chaise travelled through a world that seemed to contain a much higher proportion of chill grey sky and a much smaller one of solid comfortable earth than was usually the case.

got

Wonderful, charming, delightful! Full review: http://sffbookreview.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/susanna-clarke-jonathan-strange-mr-norrell/

This book starts with a very slow, dry, pace and just picks up speed as the pages are turned. There were several story lines to it and I wondered, for the longest time, when they were going to meet. I'm glad I didn't stop reading; the back section of the book was a good read.

Oh my goodness. I loved this book and am so glad I gave it a second chance. My dear Mr. Norrell! He is kind of like the male version of Emma Woodhouse, if she were old and not pretty and never married Mr. Knightley. He is selfish and controlling but really he means well. Mostly. This is not a Harry Potter for grownups per se. It's more about the relationships between people than the drama of plot developments. And oh, the characters! Loved it. May be my favorite of the year so far.

I bought this on the strength of a recommendation by freelance journalist and regular MacBreak Weekly panelist, Andy Ihnatko. His recommendation was based on the fact that the audible version is 32 hours long and yet is still only one credit! Thus, one can ‘stick it to the man' with this audiobook. Well, there was a little more to it than that. My interest was piqued and the review I read convinced me that I would enjoy it.

I found it to be rather a clever book in that it seems to rise above the geekish realm of fantasy and sci-fi and enter the mainstream. Yes, it is in essence a fantasy book, but not like any other I've read. There are no elves and goblins, no magic talismans, no underdogs coming into their powers and having to save the world from evil against the odds. Rather this is a tale of 19th century England and features such historical characters as Napoleon and Wellington.

The style is a literary one, reminding one of Jane Austen and the Brontes and the characters would not seem out of place in a Dickens novel.

We begin in the north of England, where practical magicians no longer, well, practice magic and the theoretical magicians read books on magic and discuss it in their clubs and societies. That is until Mr Norrell comes along, a practical magician intent on being the only one of his kind. He agrees to prove to the theoreticians that he can do magic, but makes them agree that, if he is sucessful, the theoretical magicians should give up magic all together.

Then Jonathan Strange comes along as another real magician and we follow the relationship between him and Mr Norrell throughout the tale.

The audiobook is read by Simon Prebble and he does a good job. I enjoyed the book a lot but do feel that it could have been shortened without losing too much. The constant footnotes became a little grating but I had got used to them by the end. I don't think that I would read this again and I would be hesitant to recommend it to my fantasy-loving friends, but to those of you who do enjoy the 19th century novel, I'd have no hesitation in recomending it.

There were parts of this book that I really liked, like the last 200 - 300 pages. The rest of it was so mixed that I almost gave up on it about 10 times. It took a long, long time to get going (about 200 pages) and after that most of the magic seemed almost completely unrelated to the plot, the descriptions were long and rambling, the jokes fell flat and the plot seemed to be unnecessarily complicated. There were too many pointless and disruptive footnotes and I found my mind wandering for large chunks then coming back to find that I hadn't really missed anything that mattered. Sometimes I like books like this, sometimes the tangents are fun and entertaining, in this book, not so much.

The ending, however, was great. I was completely absorbed for the last fourth of the book and it made me glad I stuck with it. I think Susanna Clarke has potential to be a great writer–her overall style and the breadth of her knowledge was awesome, but this book felt like it needed some major editing before I'd call it great.

This book is simply amazing. I think it may be the best novel of this length (more than 800 pages) that I've ever read. It's witty, compassionate, lyrical and masterfully paced. The characters are enchantingly eccentric, the footnotes are brilliant, and there wasn't a paragraph I found boring or unnecessary. Immersive, compelling, solidly grounded in fairy tale logic, historical fact, and English humor... very hard to put down!

Take one part [author:Neil Gaiman] one part [author:Terry Pratchet] and one part [author:Jane Austen]add in a liberal dose of [author:Lord George Gordon Byron] and [author:Mary Shelley] and you might get [book:Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell] by [author:Susanna Clarke]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, even though it took me close to four months to read I never felt like the plot was dragging, although there were a few sections that I wondered about the relevance of but they were all nicely weaved back into the thread of the story and the pay off was there eventually.

The language of the novel was a strange but wonderful thing. The length of the book is a direct result of epic fantasy meets homage to 19th C English florid and chatty prose. The two married together in an unexpected but beautiful way. I was completely drawn in by the use of words and especially by the narration and footnotes.

I came to read this book because someone mentioned it to me as an example of the “alternate history” genre, and I was curious about that. I was drawn in by the world of fairies and by the intricacies of the story, such as footnotes referring to fictional historical works and folklore. When I finished it, I had to go back and read it again right away. The story incorporates a lot of folklore about fairies, and involves two magicians disputing about the proper use of magic, set in the time of the Napoleonic wars. I found myself thinking about whether the book was a social commentary, and if it was, what kind of commentary it was making. I had one half-baked idea about the book offering a commentary on what it means to be English, based on a major event at the end of the book. I'd love to talk about this book with someone.

Different but forgetable

It's amazing that so many people have given this book 5 stars and can describe it with gushing abandon. While it is in no way a turkey, neither does it deserve to be given such unrestricted praise.

Some reviewers have suggested that if you find this boring then you just don't ‘get it' or that you should stick with Dan Brown, but this implies that Strange & Norrell is a difficult read, or has hidden depths, or has something to ‘get'... and none of these are true. Unfortunately, while I can recognise Clarke's great achievement in producing such a hefty manuscript and her obvious gift for writing uncomplicated prose, sadly, there is little else to praise. Somewhere in amongst all the incidental events and happenings there is a really good story struggling to assert itself. Clarke really deserved some brave editors to give the book a plot and strong characterisation to bring her vision and imagination to life.

But there are too many inconsistencies - Strange creates torrents of rain to hinder the French army but then is completely perplexed as to how to put out a fire at a farmhouse; the books in the library at Hurtfew are scattered and two magicians proceed with a long, manual search in the dark to find one volume, and don't consider using a spell to locate it. Equally, there are too many pages describing situations and events that go nowhere and achieve nothing.

Many reviewers have complained of the footnotes detracting from reading the main text. I found that they gave away the main plot line within the first few pages (which characters would side with others, how relationships would progress) and, given that this is all the plot consisted of, left very little to be surprised by.

In some ways, these footnotes are far more entertaining and contain glimpses of Clarke's wonderful fairy-tale story-telling abilities: when she restricts her word count!

There are things to admire about this work, but ultimately I was uninterested, disconnected, frustrated and bored. Characters are one-dimensional, plot is wafer thin, comparisons to Dickens are misguided and Harry Potter has far more craft. Clarke and her publishers have pulled off an astounding magic trick to conceal something so weightless and insubstantial in such a bulging tome... and to persuade so many people to believe it is a tautly written and engaging masterpiece!

“She wore a gown the color of storms, shadows, and rain and a necklace of broken promises and regrets.” You've got to love an author that can write a sentence like that.

I'm actually currently re-reading this title. It was a delightful read the first time around (though slow going at first. I find it more entertaining if I imagine that the narrator is Emma Thompson - then the book's wit shines through.)

And upon finishing it again, I have to say I think I'm even more in love with it than the first read. I just wish its size didn't make it such an intimidation factor for first readers...it's hard to convince the uninitiated to take the plunge!