Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Susanna Clarke’s debut novel begins in Yorkshire, England circa 1806. Napoleon is master of Europe, Lord Nelson is dead, King George has lost his mind, and serious practical magic has been absent within England for almost two hundred years. Out of obscurity emerges Mr. Norrell, a curmudgeon and bookworm whose ability to effectively practice magic elevates him to celebrity overnight. Soon after moving to London with his enigmatic servant Childermass, Mr. Norrell meets the opportunists Drawlight and Lascelles. Subsequently, Mr. Norrell’s assistance is employed by the British government, and the French armies grow befuddled by magic. Singlehandedly, Mr. Norrell begins to turn the tide of the war.

From the countryside emerges the amiable and recently married Jonathan Strange. Despite limited access to instructions on how to perform magic, Strange’s existence is soon brought to the attention of the elderly Mr. Norrell. Norrell takes Strange as his pupil and together the formidable pair rejuvenate the practice of magic in England. But Strange and Norrell are not without their differences, differences that soon become insurmountable and the partnership devolves into rivalry.

This novel is neither The Prestige nor the Harry Potter series. It is its own marvelous, near-perfect work of fantasy; a sprawling epic that is both familiar and wholly original at the same time. Clarke writes in a style that is something of a hybrid between Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, yet she has a talent for maintaining a reader’s rapt attention for hundreds of pages at a time. Littered with footnotes and cameos from numerous legendary British historical figures, Clarke imposes upon the reader a sense that magic is both real and played an important role in world history. In Clarke’s world, magic is dangerous and haunting as often as it is convenient and beautiful. Many footnotes describe how souls can become quite literally lost through the misuse of magic. The cameos never feel cheap.

Despite the haunting, fantastical, adventurous nature of the tale, Clarke does not lack a sense of humor. Furthermore, the challenges imposed upon the pair of magicians and many of the supporting characters are often dire. The villain, a fairy known only as “the gentleman with the thistle-down hair” has for the moment replaced Blood Meridian’s Judge Holden as my favorite antagonist in literature. Any passage in which the gentleman talks is delightful. His mere presence in a given chapter is a scene-stealer. In Clarke’s world, magic comes easily to fairies, but reason is difficult for them to grasp and often escapes them. For human beings it is exactly the opposite.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is excellent. Already renowned the world over, my attempts to describe its greatness feel futile and I worry that I can’t do her masterpiece justice in this review. There are so many characters, incidents and elements of this work I have not even mentioned in this article, each of which alone make the novel worth reading. To say the novel is like The Wire of fantasy novels would only serve to sell the book short.

-John Jamieson