The year in books #10: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is Susanna Clark's first novel, a fact that makes the incredible accomplishment embodied in its pages all the greater. It was published in 2004 to great fanfare, immediately landed on the New York Times bestseller list, won a Hugo, a Locus and a World Fantasy Award, and did all of this without attracting the slightest attention from me, who received a copy a few months ago as a gift from my wife. That I managed to remain completely oblivious of the publication of such an amazing and acclaimed book says a lot about my ability to remain oblivious even in the face of conditions that would arouse the attention of a man dead a week, but I'm glad that I did, because this is a book that is so good that I almost regret having read it and made it impossible for myself to read it for the first time ever again.

In Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell it, Clark constructs an alternate history of Europe which diverges from the much more boring one recorded in history books in that magic is an accepted, if somewhat poorly understood, phenomenon which experienced its golden age during the three-century reign of the Raven King in Northern England, declined following this and, by the time of the novel's opening in 1806, is no longer used at all but is only studied as a theoretical subject by hobbyist nobles. Of course, this state would make for a rather boring epic fantasy novel (day 1,402 - still no magic), and the discovery of the quite talented "practical magician" Mr. Norrell is the catalyst of all the excitement that follows.

The tale of Mr. Norrell, his pupil and sometime rival Jonathan Strange and the various delightful and horrifying characters that surround them is, as a story, compelling and engrossing and more than enough to justify the thousand pages of prose that make up the book. What elevates the book beyond the ranks of the merely wonderful and into those of the spectacular, what takes it past just being a good fantasy novel and makes it a great novel, period, is the language. Ye gods, the English Clark produces! I could swoon. Seriously. I started reading this book aloud to my wife when I first got it, and even after the sheer size of the book forced me to give up the task I continued reading entire sections aloud for the sheer joy of the words. Clark writes in a style reminiscent of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen, with a sense of poetry in every phrase so beautiful that even the bits of landscaping that do not directly move the story forward are a delight to read.

Another aspect of the book that I delighted in were the extensive footnotes, which imply a vast universe beyond the narrow confines of the main novel. There are references to academic magical literature, quotes from traditional folklore regarding the Raven King, song lyrics, even footnotes that stretch on for pages and could certainly have been submitted for publication as short stories in their own right.

I have read a lot of very long novels that either sag terribly in the middle or run out of steam as they enter the home stretch, leaving the reader with the impression that the books' length is more a function of poor editing than the quantity of story contained within their pages. I found the beginning of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel to be the least compelling portion of the book, and it had me laughing out loud and marveling at the originality of its ideas. It could have stayed at that level to the end and I would have had nothing negative to say about it, but as the story continues, Clark reveals more and more depth in her world and in her characters, the story becomes more fascinating, and the momentum begins to build toward a phenomenal denouement.

I always try to find at least some criticism of any book I write about. The only two negative aspects of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel in my mind are these: It ends. It has no sequel.