Where Left Is Right / The Old Site

Last year I was in the local Borders, rummaging. In Borders, at least, I don't rummage in bargain bins and such, much to the chagrin of my accountant -- if I had one. No, I rummage simply by prowling the aisles. And that's when I caught my first glimpse of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke.

A few things to notice about it. First, there was the cover. Or covers, really. The publishers had elected to prepare not one but several covers, something like those weird "collectible" editions of TV Guide -- exactly the same contents, just different covers. And the covers available for S&N (as I'll call it here) were actually not all that different from one another: identical typography, identical simple illustration (the profile, small in size, of a bird -- crow or raven -- in flight), differing only in the background color: tan, red, black. (On the black and red covers, the bird was white; on the tan, the bird was black.)

The second thing to notice about it was the sheer size: 800+ pages.

Now, it's not quite a guilty pleasure but I confess that I've got a weakness for big books. For instance, I like John Gardner's Sunlight Dialogues much more than Grendel or October Light. I like Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and V more than The Crying of Lot 49 or Vineland. And so on. Oh yes, there are big books I've never been able to get through -- Moby Dick being the sorriest example, William Gaddis's The Recognitions the most personally disappointing. But, well, I don't know what it is really; an author who's managed to (a) write a gigantic book and (b) sell a lot of copies and (c) garner critical accolades just invariably manages to please me in one or more ways (even if I haven't yet read the reviews or tracked the book's sales). It's enormously satisfying to have wallowed for days or weeks in a book you really like, y'know?

Although I'm just a little ways into it so far, S&N is clearly going to fall into that category.

As plot summary, I'll just excerpt the back-jacket copy from the recently published (US) trade paperback edition, omitting the most florid publicist-type prose:

...[an] epic tale of nineteenth-century England and two very different magicians who, as teacher and pupil and then as rivals, emerge to change its history. In the year 1806, in the throes of the Napoleonic Wars, most people believe magic to be dead in England -- until the reclusive Mr Norrell of Hurtfew Abbey reveals his powers, and becomes a celebrity overnight. Soon, another practicing magician emerges: the young, handsome, and daring Jonathan Strange. He becomes Norrell's student, and the two join forces in the war against France. But as Strange is increasingly drawn to the wildest, most perilous forces of magic, he risks sacrificing not only his partnership with Norrell, but everything else that he holds dear.

Having read the above, you may (as did I, on first glance) fancy the book a kind of Harry Potter knock-off, expressly for adults. Not so. (Indeed, as the author explains in an interview on the official S&N site, she worked on her book for 10 years.) No, it's something very different -- and the historical setting is the least of it.

Don't expect, for instance, that magic will be done on nearly every page. By page 100 or so, you will have encountered only three spells (albeit amazing ones). Also don't expect to find Harry Potter's general 21st-century sensibility. Rather, this is an early 18th-century book in more ways than its setting -- including, not least, in its style.

Clarke frankly acknowledges her favorite author to be Jane Austen, and her favorite Austen book to be Emma. The Austen influence is nearly palpable, from the superficial (there's no such word as "everybody," for example -- it's here represented as the phrase "every body") to the more profound and subtle -- especially the depiction of Regency society, right down to the satirical depictions of individuals' demeanors and physical and verbal tics. Here, for instance, she describes an English Minister (the governmental kind, not the ecclesiastical):

Sir Walter Pole was forty-two and, I am sorry to say, quite as clever as any one else in the Cabinet. He had quarreled with most of the great politicians of the age at one time or another and once, when they were both very drunk, had been struck over the head with a bottle of madeira by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Afterwards, Sheridan had remarked to the Duke of York, "Pole accepted my apologies in a handsome, gentleman-like fashion. Happily he is such a plain man that one scar more or less can make no significant difference."

To my mind he was not so very plain. True, his features were all extremely bad; he had a great face half as long again as other faces, with a great nose (quite sharp at the end) stuck into it, two dark eyes like clever bits of coal and two stubby little eyebrows like very small fish swimming in a great sea of face.

I'm not sure what about this passage made me grin more broadly: the "I am sorry to say" aside; Sheridan's remark; the adjective "clever" to modify "bits of coal"; or the final simile. (All right; it was the latter.) But I loved encountering it. There are nuggets like this scattered throughout. When I read a book like this, first and foremost among its pleasures is the vicarious one of knowing that the author had at least as much fun in its writing as I have in its reading.

S&N will disappoint some tastes, depending on readers' expectations. As I said, if you're looking for Harry-Potter-as-an-adult, you'll be way off base. If you find yourself primed by reviewers' analogies to expect something more Tolkien-like, you will be disappointed.

But if you come to it expecting Jane Austen's characters transported to a world in which real magic is once again (after centuries of neglect, charlatanism, and ridicule) a force; if you can arm yourself with a solid lading of patience (for the long term) and sensitivity to language (for the short); and if you believe you will like encountering a rich new and wholly imagined fictional world in which even minor characters are portrayed in words as if with a sharp draftsman's pen -- if all this holds, make at least a tentative effort with Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

Update, 2005-09-20: Whoops. Forgot something.