title: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by: Clarke, Susanna published: 2005-09 read: 2021-10 preview

Reader beware: this book was made into a BBC miniseries. I never watched it.

Long story short: it’s a book written as “alternative history” of Britain, or England, in the early 1800s, where magic is revived, it having died out about 400 years before.

The story evolves around Mr. Norrell, who during his lifetime collected all serious books on magic, and used them to study and practice it himself.  Successfully.

But he is not a likeable character, and thus is surpassed by his pupil, Jonathan Strange.  Despite having access to only a few of the ancient books on magic, Jonathan becomes a powerful magician, on par with Norrell, and helps the country in its struggles and fights.

Still, all is not as strong as the Raven King aka John Uskglass, who lived from about 1100.  He was king of northern England, and the elves kingdom, and some more.  Disappeared around 1400, 1500.  But, of course, being the most powerful magician every around, is still there, somewhere.

Also in the book, and the power struggle between Uskglass, Strange, and Norrell is a predominant theme of the book.

And by now you may be lost in the story. I sometimes got a bit lost in this 800-page book. But yes, I liked it.  Yes, I was impressed and it will not be a book I will quickly forget.  I even read all the footnotes of each chapter, mostly with literature references, but also often with background historical notes.  But why did it impress me?  Perhaps because it’s a work that took 10 years to complete?  And a first novel of an author where the publishers paid 1M advance?  No.

Never during the read I started to dream that it’s a sort-of-factual story.  It’s not written that way, as it describes the daily conversations of the main characters; it is too personal (w.r.t. these persons) a story.  Also because of that it is gripping, one can live with the characters, almost. 

On a day in December two great draycarts happened to collide in Cheapside. One, which was loaded with barrels of sherry-wine, overturned. While the draymen argued about which of them was to blame, some passers-by observed that sherry-wine was leaking from one of the barrels. Soon a crowd of drinkers gathered with glasses and pint-pots to catch the sherry, and hooks and bars to make holes in those casks which were still undamaged. The draycarts and crowd had soon so effectively stopt up Cheapside that queues of carriages formed in all the neighbouring streets, Poultry, Threadneedle-street, Bartholomew-lane and, in the other direction, Aldersgate, Newgate and Paternoster-row. It became impossible to imagine how the knot of carriages, horses and people would ever get undone again.

Highly recommended.  Beautiful is the use of language; Clarke goes back not just to 19th-century spelling (controul, scissars, chuses, shew, to name a few) but also to a writing style which we know rather from Jane Austin than anything one would write today.  That is at least as entertaining as Austin herself.