[Scroll to the bottom for a summarized "verdict", or read ahead for my full thoughts.]
I'll begin by saying that I have always liked fantasy novels, even pretty cheesy ones. When I was growing up, anything with a dragon or a knight on the front was appealing, and wizards or witches were also a plus. These books are almost always written in a sensational, action-packed style ("...as pain burned through her body, Kaylira tightened her grip on her magic sword Gryphonizer, and heaved herself out of the rubble through sheer force of heroic will. The Bloodwitch cackled as dark energies danced around her claws..."), and generally feature an Ancient Evil, a Chosen One, a Beautiful-but-Dangerous Love Interest, and a Doom Prophecy. Some are stylistically more accomplished than others, some are even subtle and expressive, many turn into suspiciously lengthy series, but almost all are written in a very modern, straightforward style that brings to mind most readily a Hollywood film. Bookstore Sci-Fi/Fantasy shelves are packed with multitudes of such nearly-interchangeable Tolkein retreads, and I've always loved them.
Yet wedged onto those same shelves is a misleadingly compact book by British writer Susanna Clarke. To me, it was the book's cover that immediately distinguished itself from its neighbors. Amid thousands of brightly colored, highly detailed, completely fantastical illustrations, this one boasted a nearly blank matte red cover with silvery lettering and a single embossed emblem of some kind of bird. I was intrigued enough to investigate, and I must say that I am glad that I did. As it turns out, this contrast of being in the Fantasy section but also apart from it is representative of many aspects of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (hereafter JS&MN) appears to be of only slightly thicker-than-average paperback size, but is actually 1,006 pages long, and presented in unusually tiny typeface to boot. Not that this is an inherently bad thing. Across its considerable length, JS&MN is incredibly consistent in both style and quality. Whether the characters are having tea or rearranging the geography of Spain, the voice of the unidentified narrator remains satirically straight-faced, proper, superior, and credulous. The book is even littered with somewhat high-handed footnotes, many of which outline an entire fictional body of scholarship. There is definitely a lot of information to digest here, but it tends to be presented in such a way as to be both manageable and enjoyable.
As suggested above, the story covers quite a few scenes both exceedingly mundane and entirely fantastic, but to its credit, the everyday bits and the fantasy pieces are intermingled fairly well. The basic premise is this: In England during the Napoleonic Wars, a reclusive man named Mr. Norrell comes forward as a "practical magician" (as opposed to a "theoretical magician") and offers to use his magic to aid the British war effort on the Continent. Not long after, a younger, more outgoing man named Jonathan Strange discovers a talent for practical magic, and it isn't long before he apprentices himself to Mr. Norrell. (There's obviously a lot more to it than that, but I don't want to give too much away.) Built atop this foundation is a tale that mixes dry, tongue-in-cheek satire of Victorian England with old-time fairy tale fantasy.
I can't stress the "old-time" part of that description enough; this isn't going to remind anyone of a Disney fairy tale. This is much more in the vein of the original Little Mermaid, where she turns into seafoam at the end, the version of Cinderella that involves peoples' feet being sliced up, and Hansel and Gretel where the witch is going to cook the children but gets cooked herself. Basically, this is an understanding of fantasy that has no place for Tinkerbell, fairy godparents, or kindly dwarves, and it makes the story all the more interesting. Which is fortunate, considering that, like the Victorian novels it emulates, the plot develops very slowly, often in episodes.
Perhaps it's just because I'm such a fan of Tad Williams' series, in which plots spin out over thousands of pages yet pretty much every detail along the way contributes to the denouement, but many of the individual scenes in JS&MN seem pretty extraneous. Some characters are included and developed early on, and then are simply never revisited after a while. Some things are purely extra, others eventually come back, and still others contribute in much smaller ways than I expected. While all of this does give the book a very strong, singular voice that successfully echoes both the early novel and old European fairy tales and adventure stories, it also made it very hard for me to get into.
Usually when I like a book, I don't just read it, I devour it, losing myself in the story and the need to know how it turns out. Previously, a difficult writing style has occasionally slowed me down some, but this is the first time I've encountered a book in which the plot itself just won't let me all the way in. The formal style, the arrangement of the numerous minor events in the story, and even the chapter breaks and perspective shifts in JS&MN seem deliberately calculated to keep the pace of the story well below "stately" for the majority of the book. Every time I was really getting into a particular sequence, I was jarred out of the experience in one manner or another, and as a result I picked it up and put it down an awful lot.The payoff when the story reaches its climax is breathtaking, but my raves about it are subdued quite a bit because the process of getting to it is so inexplicably laborious. To put it another way, reading this book is a lot like canoeing down an extremely sedate river for days, until you become convinced that you're actually on an unusually long, narrow lake, only to find yourself suddenly plunging over a beautiful 300-foot waterfall.
In the end, despite my tepid enthusiasm, I have to give Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell a strong recommendation. It is interesting, original, very stylistically accomplished, and can be enjoyed on a number of levels by any reader with the patience to get into it. Though it borrows heavily from two relatively well-known traditions, I doubt you'll encounter anything else quite like Susanna Clarke's debut novel.
THE VERDICT: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell would probably be equally at home on a shelf next to Northanger Abbey or next to Sword of Truth books, and fans of either will likely find something to enjoy about this very original, interesting read. Just don't expect to finish it in a flash, and don't be surprised if it proves a little hard to get into. Definitely recommended.
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