Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
To begin with, imagine Harry Potter as written by Jane Austen. While that is an imprecise high concept version of “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
But for those who find either of those bearable — or, better yet, an exciting prospect — “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell” is a strange and wonderful novel that you will live in for longer than you expect and shorter than you will end up wishing.
One of the first truly adult fantasy novels — which is to say, it emphasizes real emotions, subtle and conflicting motivations and genuine love over special effects, gore and sex — Clarke’s novel is full of characters who can be both repellent, attractive and pitiable, sometimes all in the space of one paragraph. The novel, even if one has given into temptation and read too many detailed reviews, is full of surprises, both of the large plot twist sort and or the small character moments sort. The ending, in particular, is a bittersweet wrench, perfectly in keeping with the rest of the novel, and yet slightly surprising and heartbreaking despite that.
With the love between Jonathan and Arabella Strange, the scholarly passions of Mr. Norrell and a host of “theoretical magicians,” the strange and eventually fascinating Childermass, the various cloying toadies, the sweet and in-over-their-head Greysteels, Clarke creates more delicately detailed and compelling characters than most novelists manage in a whole series of novels. And it is as much the love between Jonathan and Arabella that drives this novel as it is the love of magic of the two protagonists. But there is magic a-plenty, including spectacular magic wrought on the battlefield against Napoleon, whom one feels almost sorry for as Strange gets more and more comfortable in his role as Wellington’s magician.
But the plot is longer and more complex than that, and Napoleon is mostly a stepping stone for the magicians in their quest to return English magic to its rightful place, and their real enemy is subtle and devious, and more than a little insane. Their enemy is one of the most interesting antagonists in fiction, and Clarke successful makes him a mythic sort of villain. At the same time, she also manages to create a great deal of mystery around the ancient Raven King, creating a mystique around a totally made-up character that has the weight of real world myth and legend.
Despite the novel’s historical period and many ties to real world history, it’s not necessary to know anything about the British fighting Napoleon, the poetry and life of Lord Byron or anything else of the sort. Clarke provides more than enough to understand and enjoy the setting, although the more one knows about history, the more Clarke’s very low-key winks at it are revealed — Byron’s and the Shelleys’ legendary Swiss vacation that, in many ways, gave birth to the modern horror genre gets a dismissive reference from Strange at one point, who obviously does not yet know the historical significance of the house on the lake and those who stayed there, for instance.
I normally whip through a novel this size, particularly if I love it, as I did this one, in a weekend, or a week at most. Instead, I found myself putting the book down and not wanting to go further, wanting to savor and digest the book in small doses. Now that I’ve finished it, I only have a small short story by Clarke (on the official novel Web site) left to me of it.
If the initial description — Harry Potter as written by Jane Austen — sounds good to you, don’t hesitate. The sooner you enter the 19th century England of Strange and Norrell, the happier you’ll be. This is easily one of the best novels, of any genre or literary merit, I’ve ever read.
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