Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell: Susanna Clarke Paperback – 9 April 2015

Although one can never really tell which works will endure and which are destined for obscurity, Susanna Clarke's "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell" will, I believe, be recognised as one of the classics of the fantasy genre. This is because it is, first, obviously very good, but especially because it is vastly different to the bulk of fantasy books that pass us by each year. Remarkably, it's a first novel, and as first novels go, as accomplished a work as one could hope to find. There is only so much mileage to be had out of the Harry Potter comparisons, but, frankly, this is a different breed. In short, Rowling is a very fine storyteller, Pullman certainly a good one, but Clarke a better writer than either of them, for her work has a lasting flavour.It is the flavour - a flavour of Englishness - pervading this novel that I remember best, something one also finds in old ballads and folk tales. It feels authentic; the tale could be a hundred or more years old; it could indeed date from the era of Dickens and Austin. This is partly an achievement of Clarke's style - her writing does not seem to poorly echo, as in a lot of pastiche, some of the great Victorian voices; she can in fact write prose of such quality that we feel ourselves utterly immersed in her world of shadows and candle flame, of mysterious portals into fairy land and esoteric, venerable traditions. The world she creates is not one where the drab and the ordinary are bordered by the perilous realm; rather, in Clarke's vision of England everything appears no less fascinating and strange than the world of fairy; it is a time when, it seems, the bizarre or grotesque overlapped with the ordinary, with the two united in a common parlance. So good is the writing that one needn't feel guilty of reading fantasy - it merely underlines what should be more widely known: that the top end of the fantasy genre contains writing of a quality comparable with the best in mainstream or even literary fiction. This is a very long book, but it is endlessly fascinating and rewarding. Clarke is particularly adept at writing well-rounded scenes; without exaggeration, one can dip into the book at random and derive pleasure from reading a chapter in isolation (and, such is the way the novel has been constructed, one never feels that we are just experiencing the machinations of a plot; every scene stands by itself; inevitably, perhaps, this has resulted in what for some may seem a lack of pace). The devil is in the details, and here we find a complex, multi-layered, totally believable world, with scenes that stick in the memory, including the fleet of rain ships, the moving statues of York Cathedral, the old lady of Cannaregio and her cats, and the meeting with mad King George. Clarke's characterisation is also extremely deft: even the minor characters are quirkily fascinating, with nobody seeming to be present simply in the service of plot.It has to be admitted that the book will not appeal to everyone: fantasy lovers who thrive on heroic tales and the sublime feelings one gets from the epic mode may well be disappointed; here is something more curious and eccentric. A comparison to "The Lord of the Rings" wouldn't go amiss, however; as different as these two tales are, Clarke's tale does, in places, leave us with that same kind of yearning for the numinous that we find in the early chapters of "The Fellowship of the Ring," particularly those chapters featuring Tom Bombadil.I am not in the habit of re-reading books, and have not returned to this one since I read it almost two years ago. However, the atmosphere and many of the book's scenes have stayed with me since I read it, clearly the mark of a good novel. Original and surely destined for classic status.

Whilst I really enjoyed this book, two things have to be made clear.Firstly, it's not for everyone and I can see why some people wouldn't enjoy it at all. It's a little dry and slow moving in parts and I'd also suggest that to fully enjoy this book, a reader really needs to have some interest in either early nineteenth century history, literature from that period or folklore and magic.Secondly, it's not a light, easy read. Very long, pretty dense and heavily footnoted, if you're going to read this book you have to really commit to it, and I feel that to get the most out of it, it's best read in a few big chunks rather than one or two chapters every now and then.Now that's out of the way, I basically thought this was a great book and would highly recommend it. The balance of the fantastical, the historical and the character driven stories works well. Perhaps the author's most impressive achievement is to create an entire history of English magic, right down to a canon of accepted magical texts, that feels genuinely real. Having read this, it's easy to believe that the Raven King, for example, is a character from traditional, established legends rather than something entirely made up by the author. The footnotes, whilst making the book even longer than it would otherwise be, really help this feeling of being completely submerged in an alternative history.There are also some very well drawn characters, whether amusing cameos from the Duke of Wellington, an enjoyably amoral fairy king or the two complex eponymous heroes themselves.As far as the downsides go, it could probably have lost at least 150 pages without too much detriment to the plot. In particular, whilst it was intriguing enough to keep me reading on, the first section (of three) dragged in parts. The detailed world building comes with the cost of all sorts of side stories, some of which are very entertaining, some of which unnecessarily drag the pace down. Despite the (to my mind rather odd) comparisons with Austen on this page, for me the book is at its best in the big dramatic set pieces rather than the gentler, observational scenes, and the final third delivers the former by the barrel load and is definitely worth reading on for if you feel your interest starting to slip beforehand.Finally, some people have said they found the ending rather abrupt. Personally I thought it wrapped everything up quite neatly without being too trite and was a great conclusion to a great, if over long novel.