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Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
It is one of the great themes of fantasy, maybe even the theme: that some art or technology of incredible power has been lost, lost for ages--and just now, just in the present, it has been resurrected. We seek awakening, we seek renewal--I don't know, we seek something, because from The Lord of the Rings to The Wheel of Time to Stargate, this theme resonates.
In Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrel, the lost art is magic. This is England as the Nineteenth Century opens, and magic--founded in this country by a king who was once its strongest practitioner, a king who reigned three hundred years--is not practiced any longer. Oh, hundreds of magicians still argue vigilantly over its customs and methods and history, but the casting of actual spells is beyond them.
Enter Gilbert Norrell, a strange little recluse of a man, who hoards books and does his damnedest to end the career of any magician he can find. Who is also, by the way, the first Englishman to do magic in centuries. Mr. Norrell's purpose is to restore magic to England, provided it is studied and practiced under his terms, and preferably by no one but him.
Jonathan Strange, a young man who stumbles upon magic on a whim, who is to become Norrell's colleague, student, and adversary, has something slightly different in mind.
The subject here is not good versus evil, but a clash of ego and philosophy. The novel's villains are driven by fear, weakness, and self interest; its heroes by ambition and wonder. This complexity is what makes the novel a work of serious fiction, what prevents it from being an epic. Epics are fate-driven and rarely concerned with shades of motivation. Characters act because they must act, they must save the world or all is lost, etc., etc. Strange and Norrell want with everything they have to restore magic to England, to found a school of thought, to--well, many other things that I won't spoil--and even if the whole story has been foretold, even if it is fated, it is a story that stems from their intentions.
This is not my complaint. That it is not epic I find refreshing. That it is character-driven I find engaging. In a book about magic, about the re-awakening of mysticism, my complaint is that there is so very little that is spellbinding. Jonathan Strange in particular seems to be driven by his own imagination, and yet he seems limited and his spells tend to do little more that move things about.
The novel takes place during the Napoleonic Wars, and not long after the magicians present themselves to society, they become employed in fighting back the French. This leads to a scene suggesting great imagination, a port blockaded by ships, sails, and even a crew, all made of mist. Yet once on the ground, Mr. Strange finds himself mostly occupied by making roads and then tearing them up again. This may be useful, but for a magician it seems petty.
That said, Clarke handles the particulars of spell-casting rather well. As a matter of plot, the novel's magic must follow certain rules: Spells must have limitations, bad results must be possible and irreversible, there must be no "take-backs." This is why, in the classic short story "The Monkey's Paw," the father isn't allowed to wish never to have made any wishes--we as readers don't accept stories that "cheat" that way. In Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Clarke skirts on the edge of cheating (she allows resurrection), but never really falls in. There is also the danger that spell-casting will devolve into a game of Mornington Crescent, which is to say a conspiracy among the magicians to pretend each isn't speaking complete gibberish. This Clarke nearly overdoes.
You may have heard that this novel is, well, Harry Potter for adults. Don't believe it. It's true that Clarke shares a publisher with J.K. Rowling, and that Rowling's success almost certainly affected the publisher's interest in pushing this novel, but the two authors share very little in terms of style. Clarke's work is witty but cold, while Rowling's prose is anything but subtle and a great deal warmer. I'm not the first, I'm sure, to make this comparison: I can think of few writers Clarke's work more clearly resembles than Jane Austen. Considering the setting of this novel, however, that's probably deliberate.
The main task of a writer of fantasy is to construct a new and different world, and in this Clarke has succeeded. Her overwhelming footnotes, the dozens of side tales told by one character or another, the books and customs and politics of an England not quite as it is, but wholly consistent unto itself--these build a believable whole, they tell an engrossing story, they suggest perhaps something more.
There is talent here, a great deal of it. I believe, on the evidence of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, that Susanna Clarke does have some great books in her. But for the time being, with this, her first novel, we'll have to settle for simply "good."
You can purchase Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Not only was this an excellent review (thank you for submitting it), but I found the above passage very encouraging on a personal level. I am writing a fantasy novel (or series of novels) based on what I, as a teen, found personally was my only real complaint about LoTR: I wanted more in-depth characterization. No, that's not entirely fair, for LoTR certainly has some in-depth characters, but you get the idea. I wanted to not write yet-another-fanboy-saves-the-world epic, but to explore on an adult level the sorts of emotions you or I would find ourselves if we were in that situation.
I've written and edited the first book, over 400 pages, and now have started in on book two. I've queried a dozen literary agents who specialize in fantasy fiction, but I've yet to find one who is willing to even read a sample. They all sent back rejection notes that were remarkably similar: Too busy, best of luck with someone else.
Oh well, I will keep trying. In the meantime, I'm very glad to hear that someone likes complexity, shades of motivation, adult-level emotional responses. That's been my exact goal, and if there is a market for a Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell book, there should be one for mine as well (I hope, anyway). Thanks for the encouragement, jmweeks, even though you didn't know that's what you were doing!
For once, it was a well-written review, devoid of either childing errors or put-on verbiage.
However, I think his final grade for the book ("good") is too harsh. Having read the description that he gave before that, I'd have gone for somewhere between "very good" to "excellent".When you say there is a black and a white edition, you're not saying textual differences like in The Dictionary of the Khazars, right?
This book is very good, but is almost Dickensian in its density and heavy-handed in its treatment of the major themes. It requires a LOT of energy to get through this one properly. Worth the read, but only if you ignore the critics and take it for what it's worth. NOT Harry Potter for adults-this is something altogether different.
I work at a small bookstore in a local mall part-time, and we had three copies of this book. Personally, I had never heard of it before, and the cover is very nondescript. The book itself is rather large, and every one came shrink wrapped (which I thought was bizarre). My manager put them out on the shelf this way.
:P
One week after we got them, all three had been stolen. It would be a task, to say the least, to get that book in particular out of the store without anyone noticing (i.e. it was a bit awkward to handle). We were all confused by the fact that we'd never heard of it, and assumed it wouldn't be "popular".
Was there any sort of build up or fanfare for this book before it was released? Or were our copies stolen by one diligent person?
I'm about a third of the way through it now, so I can't give a full review, but I am enjoying it greatly. I bought it after reading about it on Neil Gaiman's blog, which is what inspired my elevator pitch for the book (when my wife asked what it was like):
"It's like Jane Austin or Charles Dickens writing a Neil Gaiman book about English magicians."
As others have opined, the style is deliberately (and so far, convincingly) Victorian. Lots of subtle characters who hide their feelings motivations from each other; lots of characters, period (I've almost had to start taking notes when minor characters from Chapter 1 show up 150 pages later); no sex, violence, or profanity (so far, I think, one "D---"); and many footnotes (some which run 80% of the page for 4 pages!).
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness
This book is good and is worth the money. You will not need to re-read it in two years when you need the space on your wall. The advertising budget is very large for this book and the reviewer should state his allegiances as I suspect some viral advertising.
Extract from Economist "Bloomsbury is now launching it with its biggest ever marketing budget for a single book."
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I'm not yet halfway, so this is not yet a review.
I'm definitely hooked. It was quite slow in starting, and very mannered in style, but the sly humor kept me reading. Many of the "scholarly" footnotes are wonderful little fantasy vignettes. For a book about magic, there is a great deal of people talking about magic and very little of them doing it. But the magical scenes, when they occur, are quite satisfyingly magical.
I can think of few writers Clarke's work more clearly resembles than Jane Austen. ... Susanna Clarke does have some great books in her. But for the time being, with this, her first novel, we'll have to settle for simply "good."
So what you're saying is, to merit a grade of, say, "very good" from you I'd have to write better than Jane Austen?
It's the evangelism that makes me bash, you know. The evangelical tradition is Christians bashing everyone else's beliefs. How often have I heard "Repent sinner, or go to hell!" from your ilk. Go ahead and get twitchy, but know that YOU are the cause of your own troubles.
When you are ready to have an enlightened, peaceful religion, you will drop the conversion drive, let people live their lives, and keep the core tenants of your religion, which are mostly good. Until then, you are just a bunch of petty bastards arguing over souls that don't belong to you.
But back to the topic at hand.. Seems like and interesting story ('Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell', not the bible). I generally don't get on well with fantasy stories set in the near past, present or the future, because well, I'm pretty sure that no magic is happening in those time zones. However, if the presentation is subtle (see John Crowley's 'Little, Big' fro an example of what I refer to), I can ussually suspend disbelief for long enough to enjoy the story. With amazon listing it at 16.99$, sounds like it might be worth the time.
What, you mean like the Bible?
Whee! Such hilarious, sophisticated humor :) And so original; nothing like it on /. or in pop culture ...
But seriously, have a read. You might rethink things:
The Bible (NIV)
I find the comparisons with Neil Gaiman interesting, because according to an interview I read with the author a while back, Gaiman was instrumental in getting the book published -- IIRC, the author's writing instructor was a friend of his and sent him a copy, which he forwarded to his editor, who went on to buy it.