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Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

I have read about a quarter of it. It is a very slow moving book and to me utterly boring. I have put it down. I may be brave enough to read it all through one day but, sorry I only read page turners regardles of genre, fact or fiction and a page-turner it certainly is not.:rolleyes: :rolleyes:
 
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

I don't think it's like Jane Austen. It's more like Vanity Fair - with fairies.
I enjoyed it but got a bit bogged down in the war bits
 
May 2006 Book of the Month

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
It's 1808 and that Corsican upstart Napoleon is battering the English army and navy. Enter Mr. Norrell, a fusty but ambitious scholar from the Yorkshire countryside and the first practical magician in hundreds of years. What better way to demonstrate his revival of British magic than to change the course of the Napoleonic wars? Susanna Clarke's ingenious first novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, has the cleverness and lightness of touch of the Harry Potter series, but is less a fairy tale of good versus evil than a fantastic comedy of manners, complete with elaborate false footnotes, occasional period spellings, and a dense, lively mythology teeming beneath the narrative. Mr. Norrell moves to London to establish his influence in government circles, devising such powerful illusions as an 11-day blockade of French ports by English ships fabricated from rainwater. But however skillful his magic, his vanity provides an Achilles heel, and the differing ambitions of his more glamorous apprentice, Jonathan Strange, threaten to topple all that Mr. Norrell has achieved. A sparkling debut from Susanna Clarke--and it's not all fairy dust.
Click to expand...
 
I started this Sunday evening and I'm still only up to where Jonathan Strange is trying to make himeself useful to Wellington in Portugal.. Anyone else having trouble staying interested?
 
I started this over the Easter holidays (totally unaware this was the book of the month for May as I haven't been here in a while).
Not being one to start a book and not finish it (unless it is truly diabolical) I am still plodding along with it. I'm up to page 772 of 846 and it is really hard work. It is well-written but just too descriptive for me, often there are whole chapters where nothing really happens. I also find it difficult to empathise with any of the characters, they seem to be either totally dull (Strange's wife), totally arorgant (Strange), totally dull and arrogant (Norrell) or really unpleasant characters (most of Norrell's 'entourage' and the guy with the thistle-down hair). The only likeable and/or interesting people are the dubious magician with the prophecy and the black servant.
 
Trumpets, horsehoofs beating, pink shadow to the rescue!!!

How can you not looove this book? ;)

I absolutely love, love, love and adore this book, I wish it had been twice as long! But I also know people who don't. I think it comes down to whether or not you like this style of prose. My mum, whom I forced to read it, could never finish it, she thought it was too slow and flowery. That's exactly what I love about it, this slow meticolous way of telling a story and the Dickensian feeling resting over it (I love that I got to use the word Dickensian there :D ). Some people might also have a problem with the magical side of the book, althought I didn't find it to be protruding, but then I like reading fantasy. I'll be happy to talk more about this book if anyone manages to finish it ;).
 
Well I don't think I'll manage to even start it, from the description you just gave, Pink Shadow, but thanks for telling us about it. :)
 
I posted on this book before in it's thread in the fiction section, I wonder if it would be possible to merge these threads when a book becomes BOTM? Anyways, I liked the book, I didn't love it. I gave it away when I was done because I didn't think I'd read it again but that being said it had a lot going for it for a first novel. I did like the story and characters quite a bit, the settings and descriptions were great too. I guess the main reason I would not read it again has to do with the length and that it seemed to drag a bit but I did give it to a friend so I liked it enough to share it and I'm glad that I read it :)
 
Like the others, I enjoyed this read. It did drag a bit in places, but that was what really appealed to me about this book. It was realistic that the story of these two magicians would drag given their personalities (especially Norrell's), and it somehow added to the overall reality of the book, helping to draw me into the extraordinary story of these two men and the people who surrounded them. I loved the fantastical aspects of this book, especially the bits involving the man with the thistle-down hair, and loved the way that Clarke was able to write a fantasy novel without making the book generic and typical.

With an original and interesting concept, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is a compelling (I read it in only 4 days - I couldn't put it down) and enjoyable read regardless of its slow pace. The characters are believeable and fleshed-out, envoking strong emotions from me during the reading of this fantastic novel. A recommended read :)
 
I loved this book as much as pink shadow did - we both get all dreamy eyed when people ask us if it's good. :rolleyes:
If the language is Dickensian, the story is Gaimanesque, and I loved both aspects. I loved the alternate history, the uses of magic, the trips to Faerie, the hints about The Raven King (hoping for more in the upcoming short story collection?), the wit, the drama, the footnotes quoting books of magic, the anglophilia, and not least the characters - especially Childermass! And it has a prophecy, and they go to Venice, and Lord Byron and mad king George are in it. I want to go back!


*mrkgnao*
 
I'm still reading, but I already agree with Pink Shadow, too:

"That's exactly what I love about it, this slow meticolous way of telling a story and the Dickensian feeling resting over it"

I never would have thought to pick this one up, if it hadn't been for this forum--so, thanks!:D
 
I just ordered from Amazon a couple days ago. I'll probably read it in a week or two as its among my TBR list.
 
Though this is not the sort of book I generally prefer, there were good things about it, too. The author has a wonderfully perverse sensibility. See the partial paragraph, "... He had shaved himself with no very high degree of skill and here and there on his face two or three coarse black hairs appeared - rather as if a family of flies had drowned in the milk before the cheese was made and their legs were poking out of it... None of his clothes were particularly clean."

I also found her intros to magic keen and convincing, for example:

"...The brown fields were partly flooded; they were strung with chains of chill, grey pools. The pattern of the pools had meaning. The pools had been written on to the fields by the rain. The pools were a magic worked by the rain, just as the tumbling of the black birds against the grey was a spell that the sky was working and the motion of grey-brown grasses was a spell that the wind made. Everything had meaning..."

When set in the action of Childermass being unable to concentrate on his work, these bits of magical world intruding on his thoughts, such simple, strong prose supports the story very well indeed.

I think that is the strongest point of the book, the ability to convey the magic in a very subtle, yet compelling way.
 
I read this a while ago. At first I found it a real struggle. It was very slow and rather cumbersome, and most of the characters were very unsympathetic, especially the two leads. Norrell was particularly odious at times. However on finishing it, I found I'd completely changed my mind. In my opinion both Norrell and Strange redeemed themselves at the end and most of the characters got exactly what they deserved. My two favourite characters, Norrell's servant and Stephen Black, did ok, which pleased me.

I very much liked the humour, at times it read much like Jane Austen but with more spells (the author lists Austen as further reading so I guess this was the aim). I liked the idea of an alternate history where fairies and magic were simply an accepted part of life and from my very limited knowledge, I believe the 'real' history was all pretty accurate. I think she has successfully evoked the feel of a 19th century novel, although the 'authentic' 19th century spelling did occasionally grate. The narrator's voice was very strong. At times this was a little overbearing and served to remove the reader from the action, such as it was. Mainly though, I did enjoy it. I'm not so sure about the footnotes, some of the stories they told were interesting, but these could have gone in an appendix. Mostly, I thought the footnotes were pointless and intrusive and broke up the flow of the story.
 
Wasn't a memeber back in May when this was BOTM. Just picked this one up and started it yesterday. Definitely a different sort of read for me but I'm hoping to enjoy it and broaden my horizons a bit. I'm worried about the slow pacing described here in this thread. I'm quite impatient. Hopefully, like Pink, I'll just get lost in the wonderful and descriptive prose.
 
I've been working on this book for a couple weeks now. I keep getting distracted by bigger and better things. I need to lock myself in a room with this book. I have enjoyed what I've read so far.
 
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