Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #127851 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-08
• Format: Bargain Price
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 800 pages

Customer Reviews

Will you like this book - a brief quiz
1. Have you read the Amazon excerpt or, better yet, the first chapter? If not, please do so. This, for better or worse, is what the next several hundred pages are going to be - dense, semi-archaic prose; voluminous footnotes in tiny print, few of which relate to the plot; and a very focussed, extremely painstaking approach to what some may feel is a genre best treated with a little less solemnity.
2. Do you have a LOT of time on your hands? The book demands as much. It does not easily lend itself to brief sessions of reading over an extended period of time.
3. Would it bother you to spend all that time and all those pages on a narrative whose main characters are somewhat less than sympathetic? If any of the answers are "No" then maybe another book would provide a more pleasurable reading experience.
However, please note the five star rating. This is a magical experience, with double meaning fully intended. I've read the book twice from cover to cover in the last six months and will probably revisit it again this summer. Ms. Clarke has created a world which compares, in richness and detail, with any of her contemporaries and most of her predecessors. The plot holds together remarkably well considering the infinity of digressions she provides. I am dying for a sequel. If you're interested, but not convinced, I would strongly recommend taking advantage of Barnes and Noble's comfortable chairs, or those in your closest library, and perusing a chapter or two. If you're not hooked by then, let it go. Otherwise, clear your calendar for the next several days and enter a new world. Real English magic may not exist, but Ms. Clarke's will more than suffice.

Brilliant But Not For Everyone, by Neil Turley
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell combines the style and pace of a Victorian era novel with a dash of magic and it's resulting messes to create a 1000 page book that is bulging with mock historical digressions and footnotes that will either make you pull your hair out or fall off your chair laughing. The Victorian style and pace make the fantasy die-hards go crazy, but it fills the historian and Victorian fans with delight. The things that are most frustrating to the average reader are the slow pace (I'll admit I nearly gave up near the end) and historical digressions. To an audience that is more used to such things, however it is a very fun and interesting book.

The book follows the stories of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, although it is 260 pages before we meet Strange and begin volume two and we start to follow his story. This slow introduction gets a little frustrating because Mr. Norrell is a very horrible man and the lack of moral characters starts to irritate you after two hundred pages or so. A quarter in to the book, we finally meet our protagonist and the reader begins to get more comfortable reading through the chaos caused by these two magicians learning magic and their participation in the war against France. After the war is concluded the plot slows down again and things get dull for a while. This would be fine place to end the book except that some of the plot threads still have not made any progress since the beginning of the book and characters like the man with thistle down hair still are complete mysteries to the reader. To keep the reader in confusion about a problem and then slow the pace of the book down is very unkind and it makes you want to give up on the book altogether. Then volume three begins three where there is a horrific mess with everything and all seems lost for a good 100 pages. This is like the climax of the book but it is so drawn out and slow that you begin to go crazy (and so does the main character at this point in the book). Finally the book ends with a bang and you still don't feel completely resolved with all of the issues raised but you shrug your shoulders and hold your breath to see if it has a sequel. In general, the book has a stop and go sort of feel where you can't put the book down in some places and you can't bear to pick it up in others. This is just fine for a patient reader but it can make everyone else go nuts.

The other thing that can frustrate the average reader are the historical digressions. Throughout the book there are footnotes, and sometimes they take up more of the page than the actual text. This is convenient because the reader can skip them at will or read them and enjoy the humorous tone of the mock-historical observations, but some of the digressions are in the text. For instance, the first 200 pages barely advance the plot at all because the protagonist has not even been introduced to the reader. A great deal of that is spent on discussing Mr. Norrell's experiences with high society and frankly it is quite dull to read. These can all be very discouraging when all you want to do is to finish the book off.

The book is very long and can make a reader impatient with the plot lines that never resolve and the slow pace and sometimes you just want it to end. Don't go into it expecting an action-packed Harry Potter adventure, but with patience and a lot of time, you'll finish the sucker off with a feeling of satisfaction that you managed to kill the 1000 page beast that has been lurking on your book shelf unfinished for who knows how long.

Delightful
My only regret is that I can't go back and read this book again for the first time. It was fantastic! I truly, whole-heartedly enjoyed every moment of the book. Sure, it's long. But it makes you READ, and think, and use your brain to follow the characters, their intentions, the storylines, the side stories, the mood and the world of the book. I have an awesome respect for Susanna Clarke for developing such a thorough, intricate world of magic and carefully integrating it with the "real" world that takes place during the Napoleonic Wars. Highly, highly recommended.