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A review by piburnjones
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
5.0
I think the first time I read this, my enjoyment of it was hampered by entering with the wrong set of expectations. Fortunately, that's just the sort of thing a reread can correct.
This is a slow-building book, a carefully built book, one that lays its groundwork very deliberately. It unfolds at the speed of Austen or Dickens, and rewards patience in the same way. It is not a book that wants you to hurry.
The intertwining stories - mainly the magicians’ work toward reviving English magic and the fairy enchantment on Lady Pole, Stephen Black and (eventually) Arabella - emerge slowly and progress gradually over many years and many pages.
For chrissake, the first character in the title doesn't even show up until the end of Part 1.
But Clarke spends that time very carefully. Is every detail absolutely necessary? Perhaps not, but they enrich the tapestry of the overall whole.
Something that bothered me in 2005 and still bothers me now is how peripheral women's viewpoints are to the narrative. For all that Lady Pole and Arabella are central to the plot, we rarely see events through their eyes. Flora Graysteel and her aunt make a nice addition to the cast, but they only come in near the end. I like Mrs. Brandy the shopkeeper too, but she's there so briefly and then gone. There are certainly some pointed digs from the author about the unfair limits placed on women of this time and place, but I do find myself wishing for more interiority for Emma and Arabella.
This is a slow-building book, a carefully built book, one that lays its groundwork very deliberately. It unfolds at the speed of Austen or Dickens, and rewards patience in the same way. It is not a book that wants you to hurry.
The intertwining stories - mainly the magicians’ work toward reviving English magic and the fairy enchantment on Lady Pole, Stephen Black and (eventually) Arabella - emerge slowly and progress gradually over many years and many pages.
For chrissake, the first character in the title doesn't even show up until the end of Part 1.
But Clarke spends that time very carefully. Is every detail absolutely necessary? Perhaps not, but they enrich the tapestry of the overall whole.
Something that bothered me in 2005 and still bothers me now is how peripheral women's viewpoints are to the narrative. For all that Lady Pole and Arabella are central to the plot, we rarely see events through their eyes. Flora Graysteel and her aunt make a nice addition to the cast, but they only come in near the end. I like Mrs. Brandy the shopkeeper too, but she's there so briefly and then gone. There are certainly some pointed digs from the author about the unfair limits placed on women of this time and place, but I do find myself wishing for more interiority for Emma and Arabella.