Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell

Finally finished this beast after about 4 months of work! Granted I had several other books going at the same time, but closing the cover on this one felt like quite an accomplishment. This should loosen up my reading schedule a bit!

Quite a lot has been said about this novel already, the first by Susannah Clarke. You can read a synopsis and other’s thoughts about this tome on Amazon, I won’t try to summarize them here.

I knew what people were saying about before I decided to tackle it myself. Having scored the hardcover for five dollars at Half-Price books went a long way towards getting me to read it I think! Knowing that so many people found it ponderous and boring, I didn’t go into it with very high expectations. I ended up taking it with me on vacation as I thought that would be the perfect time to attempt a “novel”. With work taking up most of active neurons, I tend to find my daily reading to be a bit more of the “escapist” variety. And contrary to popular belief I never had a problem carrying this around with me and onto an airplane. For crying out loud people if a “book” is too much for you to carry around then maybe you should put it down and get outside for some fresh air. I’ve never heard people bad-mouth a book because it was “too heavy” before. Jeesh!

Personally, once I started Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell, I had trouble putting it down.
It’s not a novel for everyone however, that’s for sure. The characters are not terribly sympathetic, and to make matters worse, Ms. Clarke starts the novel out with Mr. Norrell, one of the least sympathetic protagonists in the book. (sometimes you just want to smack him) In addition, there isn’t a lot of “action” in this book, nor a lot of delving in the psyches of any of the characters. It is what it is, and that is basically a sort of historical novel on the return of magic to England.

It must have been the mood I was in at the time I read it. To me it was fascinating. I love her imagination and her ability to re-write the history of this time period to include her story. Perhaps one needs to be primed with exposure to truly academic tomes of dusty history to appreciate the liveliness of her work, it’s hard for me to say. I do know that many readers will find the book a bit dry.

One of the chief complaints about the book is the use of footnotes in the text. Many feel that it slows and already plodding narrative down to a crawl. To me the footnotes filled in a lot of the more esoteric historical points that were missing from the main storyline. It was here that we learn a lot about individual magicians and their associations with the denizens of Faerie.

To summarize, this book is an excellent example of “it’s the journey, not the destination.” If you find that you are not enjoying the narrative, and wish only to move ahead towards the resolution of the plot, than this novel will not be for you. If you wish to spend an hour or so in an alternate world in which magic is real and the creatures of Faerie wait in dark shadows to prey upon the inhabitants of Christendom, then this may be something you would enjoy. I would advise going in with low expectations and aware of the fact that not a lot is going to “happen” as it were…