Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell: Buy on Amazon
'I have a bit of a problem now that the fairy roads are all open ... what do I do with them?'. - a quote from the author in a recent interview.
I got this book for my birthday about 2 weeks ago from my boyfriend, and am finally almost done with it. Of course this is to be expected to take even me this long, because it has 846 pages!
It is really its own world, an alternate "fantastic" (meaning not fantasy like dwarves and giants, or even magical magic as in Harry Potter with wands and such). The story is set in nineteenth century England, during the "Revival of English Magic" led by the two foremost magicians, Strange and Norrell.
They are actually commissioned to do magic - for example, Strange goes off to Portugal to help fight against the French with Lord Wellington. And there is a whole world of magical history which Clarke gives us a glimpse of, with very detailed footnotes regarding magical deeds and wizardry of the past, fairy stories, and more.
It is hard to describe, but I am loving it. I laughed out loud when hearing of how Strange moved the city of Lisbon temporarily to America to avoid being attacked by the French, but then has to send magical messages to the troops still in Portugal so they'll know where the troops are.
The birds around the armies are enchanted to sing in rhyme,
"Lord Wellington says.. blah blah" and that's how the message is conveyed (also by little cakes baked in the shape of letters by a baker who has no idea what they're spelling out).
Anyway, very very English. I remember being in England and how entertained we were by the wordiness everywhere.
"Way Out" instead of Exit.
The Construction Sites had about a paragraph of text: "This Road will be closed for this long because of this big project which is taking place for this reason and so on"
where in the US we might just say "Road Closed Due to Construction. "
Susanna Clarke talking about her influences on her site:
I always really liked magicians. I'm not even sure why — except that they know things other people don't and they live in untidy rooms full of strange objects.
In C. S. Lewis's Narnia stories there are only two magicians. One is weak and wicked, and the other barely gets two lines of dialogue.
But they both fascinated me. One (the weak one) has a tray of magic rings, green and yellow, as shiny and bright as sweets. They're magic, they're jewelry and they look like scrummy sweets. What's not to like? In Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell I wanted to create the most convincing story of magic and magicians that I could. The closest model was Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea stories. While you're reading them, magic seems perfectly real. You feel it must exist and it must be just as Le Guin describes.
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