Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

I've finished the book. It was very entertaining, and I simply ignored the footnotes when the main narrative was too engrossing to digress from. It's a pretty huge book, and a marvellously sustained work of writing in a period style. It's also a very crowd-pleasing novel, once you get beyond the archaisms - it's got horror, wonder, suspense, humour, a variety of fascinating characters, a plot that's full of twists and surprises - in fact, it's more like a big, juicy Dickens novel than Jane Austen's rather tepid tracts about the matrimonial overtures of young English people around the turn of the previous century.

It's a very straightforward, linear narrative, although it shifts between 4 main characters - the two magicians of the title, and two other key characters. The supporting cast is very strong, and included both Duke Wellington and Lord Byron, as well mad King George 3.

I'd find it hard to call this one the greatest fantasy novel, or debut of recent times in a time that has seen the arrival of talents like Jeff VanderMeer and China Mieville. It may well have been last year's best debut, though, and marks Clarke as a writer to watch out for if you like your fantasy entertainment lavishly detailed and envelopingly lengthy. It certainly is the most English (the nation, not the language) fantasy novel I've read in a while, and I suspect that people who enjoy Hope Mirrlees' Lud-in-the-Mist or the stories of Lord Dunsany will love this book. I certainly enjoyed it immensely, and hope that Clarke's follow up, which she claims will share elements with this novel, is as enjoyable.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I think you hit the nail on the head on several points, knivesout. (Except that you're wrong about Jane Austen, whose books are neither tepid nor tracts. But I'll forgive you this time.)

And I'm very glad to hear that there will be another book along similar lines by the same author.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

We'll never agree about Jane Austen. I admire her perfectly-balanced sentences but little else.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

JS&MN just won the Hugo for Best Novel.

Haven't read enough of last year's other books to know if this was the best choice, but it was certainly a good choice!

 

[GOLLUM]

Thanks for the update Kelpie, I feel it is thoroughly deserved in this case..

If anyone hasn't read this book I recommend it if you're interested in somethnig a bit different to the standard fantasy fare...

 

[Jay]

Good to see my vote count for something.

 

[Brys]

The next Harry Potter. IS that a good thing now?

Lol, Ainulindale would get so annoyed hearing that. It is not Harry Potter-like in any way except it uses a real world setting. It is not Young Adult fantasy, and Neil Gaiman describes it as the best book in fantasy for 70 years (I think it was to do with how well they were written, but there have been a lot of fantasy authors recently with excellent writing - Mieville, Vandermeer and Wolfe and Moorcock are still writing, as well as Harrison). At the very least, it was supposed to be the best book of last year, winning a Hugo despite strong competition

This is like Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast novels? Looks like I'm definitely going to have to get it, because if a book can even compare to them, it has to be excellent.

 

[Jay]

and Neil Gaiman describes it as the best book in fantasy for 70 years (I think it was to do with how well they were written,

Gaiman's meaning was the best book of the fantastic regarding a relationship between England and Fantasy in 70 years. The reference reffering to Hope Mirrelees' classic Lud-in-the Mist.

 

[Brys]

That's what I was trying to say. I could remember it had something to do with Lud-in-the-Mist, but I couldn't remember what.

 

[GOLLUM]

That's what I was trying to say. I could remember it had something to do with Lud-in-the-Mist, but I couldn't remember what.

So I take it you've read Lud In The Mist? Wondering what your thoughts on this book were?...

BTW nice to see another Gormenghast fan on the boards....

 

[Brys]

So I take it you've read Lud In The Mist? Wondering what your thoughts on this book were?...

BTW nice to see another Gormenghast fan on the boards....

No, I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I've heard it mentioned quite a bit (well, as much as any pre-Tolkien fantasy is mentioned). I'm definitely getting it the next time I get a chance to get some new fantasy books. At the moment though I've still got some pretty good fantasy novels to read - including Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities and Bulgakov's Master and Margharita.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Actually, I think it would be difficult to find three books in the fantasy genre more unlike than Gormenghast, Lud-in-the-Mist and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Reading any one of them in expectation of an experience even vaguely like that of reading either of the others is as good a recipe for disappointment as I can imagine.

I love the first two and admire the third, but for entirely different reasons.

 

[Thadlerian]

I just finished Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, but I was disappointed. To clarify my views, I'll have to use some slight SPOILERS, so be warned!

My first issue is with the sheer length. Judged by its appearance in physical space, one might conclude it to be 1006 pages, but with the compressed text of the extensive footnotes it's even longer.

As expressed in an earlier thread, I take a disliking for excessive thickness of books, but, on the other hand, I can enjoy it if it's a good and engaging book, or look forward to it if it's been recommended to me by people who seem to like the same sort of literature as me.

But I don't feel that this book justifies its lenght. The plot moves with a pace equal to a medium-sized glacier; I could hardly sense any tension until page 800. And even that far, any excitement, every time it showed up, was abruptly cut off by the point-of-view changing to present me even more static dialogues. I found that very frustating.

Writers like Ursula Le Guin or Gabriel Garcia Marquez could probably have told the first 4/5 of the story in less than 200 pages with hardly losing any character plot.

Which brings me to my second point: The characters. Or, to boil it down, to the only two characters I cared about: Stephen and Childermass. Both of these could have been interesting. But Stephen stagnated pretty soon after meeting the gentleman with the thistle-down hair, following him the rest of the way until the climax as an anonymous observer. Childemass was much cooler, much less predictable, but when he finally started getting things done, I found that I had reached the aforemetioned page 1006.

And then there's my third point, which is sort of a luxury on my behalf: The Anglocentrism. Seriously, it's even worse than Harry Potter. At least the later tomes of the bespectacled young hero made some attempts (however half-hearted) to attain a cosmopolitan alibi. But Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell just failed to have me suspend my disbelief.

Is there no magic in the rest of the world? Or is it (after all, the French doesn't seem all that baffled by Strange's tricks as soon as they understood he was a magician - from that on it seemed to become a purely strategical matter), only it failed at the same time as British magic? But why is there almost no recollection of it (we get to know about some ancient magicians, but had they no heritage?) in the story or the footnotes? Was there no international communication between magicians? Being neither British nor Commonwealth-ish, it's hard for me to believe in a universe that orbits London, in which the only relevant magical agenda is set by the British. This may very well have been the fact a hundred years ago on temporal matters, but then due to political, technological and economical abilities. These hardly seem relevant to John Uskglass and the others.

But in the end, it is the lenght combined with uninteresting charcters that defines this book for me.

 

[Adasunshine]

After much laboured reading (not due to the book, more to do with my children not letting me read ), I have now finally finished Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

I thoroughly enjoyed it, was a slow starter but once I got going I really loved it. Her style of humour had me chuckling away through quite a lot of the story and I fell in love with her Duke of Wellington for that alone!

Her mix of 19th century London and the magic therein was intoxicating for me, I loved the social gatherings, the attention to details and the footnotes, rather than annoy me, became some of my favourite parts of the book.

I wasn't so daunted by the sheer size as I bought the boxset so it was nicely and conveniently split into 3 separate books, which always helps in making you feel you're getting somewhere in the story!

Overall, I simply enjoyed it immensley and although it's not to everyone's tastes, I would still recommend it to anyone I come across, it's always worth trying these things, afterall, I didn't think it'd be my cup of tea atall!!!!

xx

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

The boxed-set must be a British edition. I wish they would issue it over here, because I must say that when it comes time to reread something less unwieldy than the massive hardback would be very welcome.

 

[Adasunshine]

I know it's available on Amazon.co.uk, not sure if that's any good to you and you could always check out eBay, it always surprises me what they actually have on there!

Otherwise, not sure what to suggest, I picked it up in the January sales for £6.99, I got lucky!

xx

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I do order books from Amazon.co.uk when I want them very much and they aren't available over here, but of course I'd prefer to avoid paying for shipping -- especially when it's a second copy of a book I already own.

(Not sure how I would justify that to the other person on the joint bank account!)

 

[genisis2]

Phooey. So now I'm still undecided.

When you say numerous footnotes, do you mean like footnotes on every page? Another book with footnotes, "The Amulet of Samarkand" I found pretty annoying, but I'm not opposed footnotes on principle.

I thought the footnotes in " The Amulet of Samarkand " was cute and amusing "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel" has a ton of them and I think unneeded. They dont help with the story at all. Having said that it still was an enjoyable read. Oh! Even if there were no footnotes this book still required some editing.

 

[Anubis]

I thought Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell was brilliantly written.

 

[BAYLOR]

Has anyone here seen the mini series ?