Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke - Book Review

Susanna Clarke's 782-page debut novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, sounded like it would be right up my ally, dealing with magicians in England as it does. At first I was put off quite a bit by the small print, which I found quite hard to read and focus on for any length of time. This made the first half of the book very slow going as she builds her characters. By the middle, however, I was hooked and each page made the book harder and harder to put down. By the end, my initial ugh and feelings of being tortured paid off, and paid off well.

The story is of two magicians. Mr. Norrell wants to bring English magic back into vogue, but he wants to make sure that he is the one in charge of it all and goes about foiling all the other petty magicians of the time. That is to say, if you read books about magic, you called yourself a magician even if you'd never actually cast a spell. Norrell is actually performing magic and set about getting rid of any possible competition... until Jonathan Strange appears on the scene.

Norrell takes Strange in as a student, and pretty much as his best friend. Things happen and the two come to theoretical differences and part ways over it... becoming seemingly bitter enemies. This is where the book starts taking off and sucked me in. Clarke is very good at descriptive prose and had me visualizing everything that was happening with no effort on my part:

Something was standing in the centre of Venice. It could be best described as a black tower of impossible vastness. The base of it seemed to cover several acres. It rose up out of the city into the sky and the top of it could not be seen. From a distance its colour was uniformly black and its texture smooth. But there were moments when it seemed almost translucent, as if it were made of black smoke. One caught glimpses of buildings behind - or possibly even within - it

There are ink drawings by Portia Rosenberg at various intervals, but they didn't quite agree with my own visuals so I didn't pay them much never-mind. For you, they may enhance the experience, they did nothing for me.

If I had to pick a favorite character, it would likely be the Fairy gentleman with the thistle-down hair. He's eloquently drawn here as quite the rascal and lends some very humerous spots to the novel. One part I especially liked was a scene with him and one of the folks he's enchanted, Stephen Black, who is by day kind of a butler-ish guy to one of the local Lords... and by night the faerie's supposed best bud. Everybody is so polite to each other for fear of giving offense, so when Black is suddenly whisked away to a bog and finds himself sinking rapidly the following delightful line is how he phrases his predicament:

Black: I would never presume to interrupt you, sir. But the ground appears to be swallowing me up.

I adore how she draws humor by using understatement like that. I found myself chuckling over lines like that numerous times.

Now, when dealing with opposing characters you would think that it would be natural to be drawn to the side of one or the other. To an extent, I was with Jonathan Strange, but not overly so. Neither one is very terrible really, nor is either one obviously good. I think under the circumstances Strange was more right (although arrogant) than Norrell was, but the ending will show you why these lines are not all that obvious and makes the whole thing worth the journey. She ties it all together rather nicely.

On the downside, Clarke's habit of over-using the footnote was tedious and annoying. Many are indeed clever side-notes to the story, but not really necessary. When I read fiction I tend to get really immersed in it and having my attention drawn away to the bottom of the page interrupts my visuals and irks me to no end. When I then go back up to where I was on the main page it takes me a few paragraphs to get back into the swing of things.

I'm going with 4 stars for this one. It's a bit of a slow start and the foot notes are annoying, but the ending did make up for all the irritation and left me more than satisfied when I closed the book. If you are the patient sort and like subtle British humor mixed with intrigue, then give this one a try.