Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

You have to give Susanna Clarke props for ambition. In itself, her combination of fantasy and well-researched historical fiction isn’t new. Guy Gavriel Kay has made a career out of it, and a very good one, too. (If you haven’t read any Kay, do yourself a favour and rectify that situation as soon as possible. Seriously, the man is brilliant.) However, to write a huge historical fantasy novel in the language of the time in which the story is set is a different feat altogether, and in Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell Clarke almost pulls it off. Almost, but not quite.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is the story of two wizards who change the course of early-nineteenth-century history while failing to notice the many strange things that are going on in the lives of those around them. The first quarter of the book centres on Mr Norrell, a reticent old man who believes he is the only practical magician in England and longs to do something great and useful with his powers. After a bit of a struggle for recognition, he is employed as a weapon in England’s struggle against France, which is just then getting a bit uppity in Europe. Then, suddenly, a second magician appears on the scene -- the much younger and more likeable Jonathan Strange. Mr Norrell takes Strange on as his pupil, and for a while the two magicians work side by side, until, in the grand tradition of such things, their relationship turns sour and master and student become rivals. What follows will determine not just their fates, but many people’s, and indeed the fate of magic in England.

Clarke tackles many themes in her 800-page book, both genuine and fantastical. First of all, there’s the pseudo-historical angle in which Strange helps the Duke of Wellington beat Napoleon, tries to cure the madness of King George III and meets other interesting characters of the time. Secondly, there are various social issues, such as the relationship between the classes and the art of knowing one’s place in the greater scheme of things. Last but not least, there’s a spooky alternate universe with which the magicians get to deal, for as they find out rather late in the book, the good old Celtic world of Faerie is far from dead in nineteenth-century England. Clarke doesn’t go in for the kind of thorough world-building many other fantasy authors favour, but her scholarly take on Faerie (set out in weird but oddly entertaining page-long footnotes and journal articles) is consistent, intriguing and original -- a word one doesn’t often come across in reviews of fantasy books.

That said, it took me a bit of time to get into the book. The main problem (as so often with me) was of a linguistic nature -- to wit, the faux-Austenesque quality of the writing. Clarke has an excellent shot at Austen’s dry, witty brand of English, but for the first one hundred pages I simply wasn’t taken in. Rather than being transported straight to Regency England, I was acutely aware of the artificiality of the language, to the point where I occasionally felt like I was reading an unintentional Austen spoof. It didn’t help that the early part of the book centred on a prim, petty, vain old man to whom I couldn’t relate and that the writing was rather detached. I persevered, though, and I’m glad I did, for about 150 pages into the book things began to fall into place. Not only did I get used to Clarke’s language, but I began to enjoy it, finding pleasure in her subtle satire and in such throwaway phrases as ‘there is no word in the English language for a magician’s garden two hundred years after the magician is dead�, which evokes all sorts of things without actually describing them. Even better, Jonathan Strange finally entered the picture, and suddenly the novel got a whole lot better. It got youth. It got flamboyance. It got fabulous feats of magic. It got rivalry. It got loyalty and betrayal, madness and obsessions and characters being redeemed from zombie-like existences. It got a pretty entertaining take on history. It got a cameo by Lord Byron (a boon to any historical fantasy novel -- see The Anubis Gates). And most of all, it got a heart, although the writing continued to be a bit more detached than I liked. Thanks to all these things, I ended up quite enjoying the book, laughing out loud at some of Clarke’s more entertaining notions, such as generals wishing to replace their cavalry’s horses with unicorns so as to gore Frenchmen through their hearts, or Jonathan Strange temporarily moving Brussels to America to get it out of Napoleon’s way because ‘[America] always looks so empty on the maps�. Jane Austen never came up with anything like that, and that’s a compliment.

In the end, then, I enjoyed Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell quite a bit. I didn’t love it as much as I had hoped, but I certainly admired it. If only Jonathan Strange could have entered the story a bit earlier and if only the writing could have been a bit less detached, I'd probably have given the book five stars. Not bad, given my initial frustrations with it.

(One day I’ll learn to write concise reviews. Sigh.)