Book Notes: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Susanna Clarke
800 pages. Bloomsbury, 2004.
As you can see on this site, I review books that I find interesting – some are computer books, since, after all, writing computer books is my main gig. But many other reviews are novels that I have enjoyed, or other curious books. But I won’t bother to fully review this book, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, since I didn’t finish it. Hence these “book notes” about a literary fart.This book is 800 pages of slog. It is supposed to be a story of magic and magicians, or, as the publisher has tried to market it, a sort of Harry Potter for adults. Alas, there is little magic in the story, and even less in the writing. The faux 19th century writing (which uses a few archaic spellings to try and sound old, but doesn’t sound older than, say, the 1930s) is supposed to add charm. It doesn’t. It’s not that the writing is bad – it is the literary equivalent of tea and toast; something you read that inspires no extreme feelings, but something that is very bland and unthreatening.
Susanna Clarke’s book is a literary fart – it has made a lot of noise and smells bad so it gets noticed. The marketing machinery worked; it got me to buy the book. (After all, I’m a big fan of 19th century literature, as well as science fiction and intelligent fantasy.) But Clarke suffers from bigitis. She wrote a big book – which, by the way is probably the thickest book I have ever owned. The publisher chose to use a thick paper to make it look even bigger, but they could have considered the readers more and made it easier to hold. They also could have considered the readers more by using the old blue pencil to cut a few hundred pages from this book.
I gave up after about 300 pages, long enough to see that, while there were a few plot developments, the remaining 500 pages would have been as much of a slog. Again, the writing is not bad; it is bland and tasteless. The story is uneventful, and the author uses a lot of words to tell us that not much is happening.
I think I’ll go and read some Henry James now. His books may be long, but at least there is some meat in his plots, and his writing is like a smorgasbord of delectable tidbits.
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I actually listened to the entire book in unabridged audio, which was over 35 hours long. Why? I guess because I was driving back and forth to work.
I agree with you that it is a truly horrible book. I rate it as one of the worst books I have actually finished. However, the number one worst book I have ever finished was The Ruins by Scott Smith, which apparently made the best-seller list because Stephen King liked it. Now King isn’t always this far off the mark. I really like Memory of Running, another book that he actually used his influence to get published.
The Memory of Running is a beautiful book, which I actually bought on
audiobook because I had heard the author read other books (notable Richard
Russo’s novels).