Book Log 50/2012 - Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

[jacey]

The story of two magicians, their relationship with each other and their attempts to rehabilitate practical English Magic. Mr Norrell is rather staid and respectable while Jonathan Strange, at first his student and then his rival has leanings towards the wilder magic of the one-time Raven King, John Uskglass. The story dips and weaves between the two of them, sometimes alone, sometimes together with many side-forays into parallel stories most of which eventually join together, though some are very secondary to the actual plot – which is meandering to say the least. There's Mr. Segundus, a somewhat timid theoretical magician, who seems to be the main character in the opening section but who then contributes very little to the actual plot. There's Lady Pole, whose restoration from the dead is the springboard for a plot involving her husband's manservant, Stephen Black and Jonathan's wife, Arabella Strange who are all caught up in a web of magic woven by The Man with the Thistledown Hair (the present king of Fairy). Woven quietly into the background is Mr Norrell's solid manservant, Childermas, who knows much more than his master suspects.

It could be described as an alternate history of England with the addition of magic. At the outset is supposes that magic is known about, but practical applications have been lost and only theoretical magicians remain, those who have studied the history, but make no attempt to do spells. There are major historical characters woven into the narrative, Wellington, mad King George and Byron, for instance, and the tone is superficially Austenesque, though Austen is much more lively and succinct. The addition of footnotes which detail the history of English magic are obviously a delight to some readers, and are very copmprehensive, but bloat the whole thing to close to 1000 pages. I read the first section of this book and listened to the rest as an unabridged audio book, but had I read all of it I think I would certainly have been skimming the footnotes. (Imagine how it would have slowed the pace if Tolkien had interspersed Lord of the Rings with footnotes that later became the Silmarillion. The asides are interesting in their own right but add nothing to the forward momentum of the story.)

While this was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the 2005 Hugo for best  novel and has received rave reviews, I have to say that I had to force myself to finish it. The author's imagination offers some magnificent glimpses of magic and illusion from Norrell's first demonstration to the York Society of (theoretical) Magicians to Jonathan Strange's adventures in the Napoleonic wars as Wellington's 'Merlin' culminating in the Battle of Waterloo where he creates marvellous magic to confound the enemy. However – and for me it's a big however – it takes too long to get to the point. We don't even meet Jonathan Strange until a quarter of the way through the book and though it's set up much earlier all the real plot happens in the last third.

This is a hugely successful book for it's author (a million pound advance for a first novel is not to be sniffed at), but I think this is a book you either love or hate. While there are many of the former, I fall into the latter category, I'm afraid. I couldn't work up any enthusiasm for the main characters. I found Mr Norrell unutterably boring and was ambivalent about Jonathan Strange. I liked John Childermas and Stephen Black, the ensorcelled black butler, much better.

I wouldn't advise not reading it – you may, after all be one of the lovers rather than haters, but I would say that if you aren't gripped by it immediately, then put the book down and quietly back out of the room because the next 900 pages only offer more of the same.

Comments

[vaughan-stanger.livejournal.com]

I felt much the same way about this book. I didn't hate it, but I did feel distinctly underwhelmed.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I loved it when I read it shortly after it came out. I haven't tried re-reading, but I felt that it captured the weirdness of genuine British fairy lore perfectly.

It's obviously one of those Marmite things, you either have the taste for it or you don't.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Thanks. That's a useful review. The book is in my backlog waiting for me to read it, so I shall give it a chapter or two when its turn comes and not persevere beyond that if it fails to grab me.

[tychist.livejournal.com]

I never finished it. It sits on a shelf in full view because it was a gift but I've never been tempted to give it another go.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed lots of it but it was hard to remain involved enough with any of the characters to remember what their relationships were. I was goign to say I have a foot in both camps, but I don't: I don't love it and I don't hate it.