A review by nigellicus
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

funny mysterious tense

5.0

This is real favourite of mine, and it's the third time I've read it and I devoured it. It combines a crisp eighteenth century novel with magic in a brilliantly seamless way, as the gentlemen magicians go about trying to impose values of rational thought and practical application to the restoration of British magic, denying or overwriting or suppressing the historical roots of that magic deep in Britain's folkloric past, far too dangerous and difficult to control for their liking - or at least for the liking of Mr Norrell. Mr Strange's sympathies lean elsewhere. Secret histories lurk in casual asides and old legends and tales and footnotes. Female magic is particularly suppressed, and if Mr Norrell has is way, it will remain so. Drawing room dramas, Napoleonic warfare, dreadful enchantments enduring under everyone's noses and the steadily growing influence of the Raven King kept me hooked, but it's the brilliantly drawn characters that compelled me to keep reading long after my poor old eyes had started to boil like eggs in the pot.

Edit 2020 - listened to the audio and it was lovely BUT the pronunciation of 'daoine sidhe' is a violent act of colonial imperialistic ecocide.

2021 - listened to it again, despite violent colonial ecocide. Like slipping into a warm bath.

Dec 2023 - listened again.