goodreads jonathan strange and mr norrell

Clarke writes magic into the history of England using a style highly reminiscent of the 18th and 19th century masters and complements her plot with a number of encyclopaedic entries in the sometimes lengthy footnotes. The above paragraph contains most of the defining features of Clarke’s style: the light, mildly ironic Austenesque tone, the somewhat overdone quaintness, the intrusive, yet not overbearing narrator, and the matter-of-fact reference to the supernatural. Imagine then the interest that surrounded Miss Wintertowne! No young lady ever had such advantages before: for she died upon the Tuesday, was raised to life in the early hours of Wednesday morning, and was married upon the Thursday which some people thought too much excitement for one week.’

‘It has been remarked (by a lady infinitely cleverer than the present author) how kindly disposed the world in general feels to young people who either die or marry. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell definitely has its merits, particularly with regards to the style and the in-depth re-imagination of a magical English past, but one must not turn a blind eye to some of its definite shortcomings.

‘Un questionably the finest English novel of the fantastic written in the last seventy years’ says the renowned Neil Gaiman about Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, however, one cannot help but wonder which books Mr Gaiman actually placed into the category of the ‘fantastic’ so that they ended up overtaken by Clarke’s gargantuan novel.

Goodreads jonathan strange and mr norrell