Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

Just after Christmas, I went into Keplers in Menlo Park, looking for a specific book. They didn't have it. The over-zealous store person then tried getting me interested in buying something else. She started off recommending the Neal Stephenson Baroque trilogy. I had them. Next was the Harry Potter books. I have those too. She then mentioned Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell describing it as an adult Harry Potter. Now, as someone who's read all the Harry Potter books as an adult, and loved them, I wasn't exactly sure what she meant by this. Neither did the other store person behind the information counter. She continued by saying that it's the story of two English magicians who are trying to restore magic to England. Not much to go on, but they both recommended it, so I bought the hardback. It had a red cover. She mentioned that that was something special too as it was a limited edition and all the covers are black now. I've no idea exactly what that means.

Onto the actual book. I started this about six or seven weeks ago when I finished The Confusion. As it was another large book (almost 800 pages), I decided to try to just read a chapter a day to start with and spend most of my reading time on other things. This was probably a good choice. The book is enjoyable but does take a bit of work. It uses footnotes. I have no problem with footnotes in a novel (Jack Vance is my favorite author, so I'm very familiar with them), but some of these footnotes were 2 and a half pages long, of an 8 point font! I've got to believe there is some other literary style that could have been used to introduce the footnote verbiage. Perhaps the footnotes were there to make it look more like an academic text. If so, I'm not sure it succeeded.

About two thirds of the way through the book (the start of the third volume), the pace increases dramatically, and the book becomes hard to put down. It's not a page turner like some of the mystery novels I've read recently. As I mentioned above, you'll have to work at it, but it's well worth it. I don't want to give away what happens, so I'm not going into many details here. If you like being spoilt for details, then see some of the editorial reviews on the Amazon web page.

The book is extremely imaginative, particularly with some of the spells. I liked the use of characters from history like the Duke of Wellington, George III and Lord Byron, who blend in with Strange and Norrell perfectly. I also liked the use of Old English every now and again throughout the novel.

I'll now be looking for a few much shorter novel to sink my teeth into before I return to the thick heavy volumes on my to-read bookshelf.

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( May 04 2005, 04:36:16 PM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink