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3.96 AVERAGE
3.96 AVERAGE
300 pages into 800 page book and just don’t care about any of the characters. Slow. Not sure why this was such a hit. I loved Piranesi, tho!
adventurous
lighthearted
mysterious
relaxing
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Painfully slow. Would be greatly improved by the hands of a more ruthless editor.
I’m sure this is right up some peoples street, and I imagine it’s well loved. I just think it’s not right for me at this time. I will pop it back on the shelf and future me will try it again
dark
funny
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Oof. This was a well written, tedious read, whose purpose mystified me. I have no idea why it ended the way it did. I think it’s a commentary on English society but any such allusions were out of my reach. The fantasy aspects of it (magic) seemed squelched by the ponderous portrait of social moeurs that is the backbone of this long long long long book. Oof.
adventurous
lighthearted
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Someone in our book club called Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell turgid, and while I disagree, I understood what he meant. The footnotes didn’t contribute to the narrative as much as they hinted at short story ideas that Susanna Clarke abandoned. At the same time, I think that it has one of the most realistic magic systems I have ever read. It makes one believe that magic could have existed in Victorian England, more than the Harry Potter series anyway.
The world-building and descriptions of fairy magic are enchanting, but the character-development and pacing leaves a lot to be desired. There are long sections of the book where the author is just indulging in description of the nineteenth-century setting without moving the plot forward--and while some of that is quite fun, it's a bit much in the end...
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I would say I loved about 98% of this novel. My only real issue is with the ending, which is both too convenient and too true to life. Maybe I'll discuss it a bit down below under some spoiler tags.
I've owned this book for almost a decade so I can't believe it's taken me this long to read it, but I'm glad I finally did. The novel is just propulsively charming and disarming. It also manages to be effortlessly pleasant. And so reading the novel is less about discovering what happens next and more about just inhabiting this alternate history England where magic is simmering beneath and behind the world we know. Even things that seem like they could disrupt the flow of such a pleasant text--like the footnotes--end up not bothering you much. I also imagine you could read the entire novel without looking at the footnotes and only miss a few things worth knowing, which maybe makes them unnecessary. Even so, I liked the footnotes, for the most part. I liked them more when they elucidated little folk stories and histories rather than when they just listed some magician and the magical book they wrote.
The way magic slowly swells beneath the novel is also great. The way magic enters the narrative so naturally that having a character step into a surreal new landscape or have the familiar other itself before your eyes just works so well. Especially because you can go a long time without even encountering any magic. Magic happens all the time through the last 700 pages of the novel, but only sparingly do you get to experience what that feels like. So we have a lot of novel happen in between these twisting surreal and othering experiences of magic, which makes them always captivating and refreshing and sometimes bizarre enough to be uncomfortable.
But, yeah, there are so many great characters in the novel. Part of me wishes there were more of these novels. More of Segundus. More of Childermas. More of Vinculus.
I guess I'll get a bit into the spoilers here for the last fifty pages of the novel.
I find the resolution of the novel kind of...watery. I think it's a positive that there's not some big magical showdown like what you might get if this was a Harry Potter novel or something more traditionally fantasy. But I also think the way it wraps up is a bit too convenient and not messy enough. I think the way the Gentleman with the Thistle-down Hair is defeated is good enough. It being a complete accident of misunderstood and opaque magic, but I also wish that this was all a bit messier.
The way the Gentleman is defeated feels random enough and wild enough to be so completely true to life that it doesn't bother me at all. But the way Strange and Arabella never really have tension in their relationship because of this or the way that everyone sort of gets something that they want...
I don't know. It's not bad but, for me, this keeps it from a five star. It's not exactly disappointing, but it bothers me more than I thought something like this would. It makes the novel feel slightly slushy where it needs to be firm.
I think it might be a bit of a cowardly ending, when I expected something bold. Or, not even cowardly. Just too neat. So much of the novel is bold in interesting ways. Subtle, powerful, bizarre, pleasant. And so our ending, while matching most of those adjectives misses, I think, the msot important one. It lacks power. Turning this novel from an unforgettable experience to one where I'll mostly fondly remember sequences and sections, rather than have my life twisted beneath my feet where I'd go on thinking about it for years to come.
So maybe that's another inadequacy of my own rating system. In a sense, I'm doing something I hate that people do, which is to rate the book that exists against the one that I wish existed. It's enough to make me change my mind and give it five stars!
But, for now, I think I'll live with my hypocrisy and both love this novel and be a bit disappointed that it's somehow not the perfect novel I think it's so close to being.
I've owned this book for almost a decade so I can't believe it's taken me this long to read it, but I'm glad I finally did. The novel is just propulsively charming and disarming. It also manages to be effortlessly pleasant. And so reading the novel is less about discovering what happens next and more about just inhabiting this alternate history England where magic is simmering beneath and behind the world we know. Even things that seem like they could disrupt the flow of such a pleasant text--like the footnotes--end up not bothering you much. I also imagine you could read the entire novel without looking at the footnotes and only miss a few things worth knowing, which maybe makes them unnecessary. Even so, I liked the footnotes, for the most part. I liked them more when they elucidated little folk stories and histories rather than when they just listed some magician and the magical book they wrote.
The way magic slowly swells beneath the novel is also great. The way magic enters the narrative so naturally that having a character step into a surreal new landscape or have the familiar other itself before your eyes just works so well. Especially because you can go a long time without even encountering any magic. Magic happens all the time through the last 700 pages of the novel, but only sparingly do you get to experience what that feels like. So we have a lot of novel happen in between these twisting surreal and othering experiences of magic, which makes them always captivating and refreshing and sometimes bizarre enough to be uncomfortable.
But, yeah, there are so many great characters in the novel. Part of me wishes there were more of these novels. More of Segundus. More of Childermas. More of Vinculus.
I guess I'll get a bit into the spoilers here for the last fifty pages of the novel.
Spoiler
I find the resolution of the novel kind of...watery. I think it's a positive that there's not some big magical showdown like what you might get if this was a Harry Potter novel or something more traditionally fantasy. But I also think the way it wraps up is a bit too convenient and not messy enough. I think the way the Gentleman with the Thistle-down Hair is defeated is good enough. It being a complete accident of misunderstood and opaque magic, but I also wish that this was all a bit messier.
The way the Gentleman is defeated feels random enough and wild enough to be so completely true to life that it doesn't bother me at all. But the way Strange and Arabella never really have tension in their relationship because of this or the way that everyone sort of gets something that they want...
I don't know. It's not bad but, for me, this keeps it from a five star. It's not exactly disappointing, but it bothers me more than I thought something like this would. It makes the novel feel slightly slushy where it needs to be firm.
I think it might be a bit of a cowardly ending, when I expected something bold. Or, not even cowardly. Just too neat. So much of the novel is bold in interesting ways. Subtle, powerful, bizarre, pleasant. And so our ending, while matching most of those adjectives misses, I think, the msot important one. It lacks power. Turning this novel from an unforgettable experience to one where I'll mostly fondly remember sequences and sections, rather than have my life twisted beneath my feet where I'd go on thinking about it for years to come.
So maybe that's another inadequacy of my own rating system. In a sense, I'm doing something I hate that people do, which is to rate the book that exists against the one that I wish existed. It's enough to make me change my mind and give it five stars!
But, for now, I think I'll live with my hypocrisy and both love this novel and be a bit disappointed that it's somehow not the perfect novel I think it's so close to being.