Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell: A Novel
The 20th Anniversary Edition of the Hugo-award winning, epic New York Times Bestseller and basis for the BBC miniseries, where two men change England's history when they bring magic back into the world, now with a new introduction from V.E. Schwab.
In the midst of the Napoleonic Wars in 1806, most people believe magic to have long since disappeared from England - until the reclusive Mr. Norrell reveals his powers and becomes an overnight celebrity.
Another practicing magician then emerges: the young and daring Jonathan Strange. He becomes Norrell's pupil, and the two join forces in the war against France.
But Strange is increasingly drawn to the wild, most perilous forms of magic, and he soon risks sacrificing his partnership with Norrell and everything else he holds dear.
Susanna Clarke's brilliant first novel is an utterly compelling epic tale of nineteenth-century England and the two magicians who, first as teacher and pupil and then as rivals, emerge to change its history.
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Community Reviews
The (softback) edition I have comes in at just over 1000 pages, and this is one of the reasons that it has been sitting on my bookshelf for a number of years now, occasionally glaring at me and daring me to pick it up and read it.[return][return]I am glad that I have read it, and it is not like any book I have read before. Excellent for a first book, there is humour, romance, history (some of which I hope is made up!), and most importantly of all magic, and lots of it. The footnotes are as important as the main text, and all shows an attention to detail that I dont know if the author will ever achieve again, purely for the amount of time this book must have already taken from her.[return][return]The only book I can realistically compare it to (in terms of length, scope etc) is "The Crimson Petal and the White", which I think is another debut novel. Have to admit that whilst I thought "Crimson" finished too soon, in a way I was glad that "Jonathan" did, although I was satisfied with the openness of the ending and the potential of more.
This book was really difficult to get into. Took me until the final third to not be able to put it down. And this being a massive book, explains why it took me so long to read it. It felt like the book took entirely too long making clear where we were going with the story in favor of social descriptions and interactions. Still, the language was perfectly in period and the world had some interesting elements. I think if you are a lover of Dickens or Austen then you'd love this book right away.
While not a perfect book, this is an amazing book, and is now one of my favorites. The author has presented a completely constructed alternate version of 1800s England and Europe with a bit of magic (including inventing a whole library's worth of cited fictional references for the footnotes), and populated it with interesting, annoying, and deeply-flawed characters. It is very long, but uses all of those pages well to really immerse you in the world. Read this book!