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A review by manjala
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
3.0
I find myself having difficulty describing my thoughts and feelings upon this book. I think it's one of the rare occasions where I actually preferred watching the TV series over reading it. (if you are interested in the story but feel daunted by the length of this book-- I heartily recommend watching the show!)
This one took me a long-ass time, because of the prose but also because I feel like lots of parts of the story felt too long winded and took me out of the immersion completely. On most days I struggled with picking up the book and doing some actual reading. At other times I found myself lost in the magic of a scene, enjoying the story and atmosphere immensely, and felt like the book wasn't as long as it felt most of the other moments I was reading. My conclusion thus far is that there are parts or scenes with dialogue that could've been made shorter or left out altogether.
Which brings me to my next point:
The writing style is very focused on dialogue between characters, and I was glad to have some visual reference from the TV series, otherwise it would've been quite difficult to keep the characters in my head straight and clearly pictured. Some environments, which were beautifully made in the show (such as the so called "Other Lands"), were barely described in the novel, which disappointed me. This is a problem I tend to have with classical novels in general, and as this felt like a English classic, I feel like it's more a problem on my part that other people might not have.
My last point is that the fact that there were barely any scenes from the point of view of either Norrell or Strange made it more difficult for me to get attached to both of them. Which is a shame in my opinion, since this story basically revolves around the pair of magicians in the first place!
This one took me a long-ass time, because of the prose but also because I feel like lots of parts of the story felt too long winded and took me out of the immersion completely. On most days I struggled with picking up the book and doing some actual reading. At other times I found myself lost in the magic of a scene, enjoying the story and atmosphere immensely, and felt like the book wasn't as long as it felt most of the other moments I was reading. My conclusion thus far is that there are parts or scenes with dialogue that could've been made shorter or left out altogether.
Which brings me to my next point:
The writing style is very focused on dialogue between characters, and I was glad to have some visual reference from the TV series, otherwise it would've been quite difficult to keep the characters in my head straight and clearly pictured. Some environments, which were beautifully made in the show (such as the so called "Other Lands"), were barely described in the novel, which disappointed me. This is a problem I tend to have with classical novels in general, and as this felt like a English classic, I feel like it's more a problem on my part that other people might not have.
My last point is that the fact that there were barely any scenes from the point of view of either Norrell or Strange made it more difficult for me to get attached to both of them. Which is a shame in my opinion, since this story basically revolves around the pair of magicians in the first place!