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A review by yolanda_h
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
5.0
Even though it took me over a year to finish this book, I can’t award it with less than 5 stars. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is filled with folk tales, fantasy and magic on one hand, but on the other hand it is written like the story is rooted in real history, with historical facts and footnotes. This makes it a story with a wealth of information, the magic is embedded in the “real world” and is written like it is very possible these magical things could have happened.
This is what makes the book so special and very well crafted, on the other hand it made it an extensive and long read. If I wasn’t in the right state of mind, I found myself putting the book away after a few hundred pages and starting something else. Especially the first hundred, two hundred pages were a bit of a challenge. But Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell never really left my mind and their story kept thugging and poking me in my mind, like there was a mental link between me and this fictional, but very believable world. So I kept starting over, and I finally found my groove.
What counts is how I felt when I read the last sentence, reread it and closed the book for the last time. That feeling of nostalgia and the slight feeling of loss, because ending this story means having to let the charachters go. What counts is how loose ends are tied up and how some loose ends still remain. What counts is that this story and their characters have become precious to me and will stay with me for a long time.
This is what makes the book so special and very well crafted, on the other hand it made it an extensive and long read. If I wasn’t in the right state of mind, I found myself putting the book away after a few hundred pages and starting something else. Especially the first hundred, two hundred pages were a bit of a challenge. But Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell never really left my mind and their story kept thugging and poking me in my mind, like there was a mental link between me and this fictional, but very believable world. So I kept starting over, and I finally found my groove.
What counts is how I felt when I read the last sentence, reread it and closed the book for the last time. That feeling of nostalgia and the slight feeling of loss, because ending this story means having to let the charachters go. What counts is how loose ends are tied up and how some loose ends still remain. What counts is that this story and their characters have become precious to me and will stay with me for a long time.