JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR. NORRELL
by Susanna Clarke
Bloomsbury, 782 pp.
Many people – I’m thinking in particular of publishers and whoever it is that arranges merchandising opportunities – would consider being dubbed "Harry Potter for adults" the highest honour a book could receive. I think it would be more of a mixed blessing, myself. In addition to writing a book about a world much like ours but with magic, an author would be expected to match the boisterous energy, youthful passion and not-entirely-subtle morality present in J.K. Rowling’s series, which is what really sells a bazillion copies of those books.
But that’s not the tack that Susanna Clarke has taken in her debut novel, a tale of two men endeavouring to bring true magic back to a society that has forgotten its fantastic roots. Clarke has centred her alternate universe in 19th-century England, and conjures up that era as much through its (thankfully) long-discarded literary techniques as through her descriptions. There are archaic spellings such as "surprized," "shoking" and "chuse;" punctuation where one wouldn’t expect it and none where one feels the need for it; and footnotes for every instance of strange book titles, famous dead people and obscure historical events (fictional or otherwise) that, in a work like Harry Potter, are simply meant to add atmosphere.
The effects are somewhat Dickensian – sometimes even Austen-tatious – and there’s more than just a dash of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair in the use of the Napoleonic Wars as a backdrop. And while those authors’ styles were byproducts of the era they lived in, Clarke’s choices feel rather contrived for a 21st century book, and result in hard slogging at times. It’s a bit like watching a costume drama, except that you don’t have the option of focusing on the costumes if you lose interest in the plot.
It also seems that Clarke isn’t as concerned with getting inside her characters’ heads as she is with detailing their mannerisms and interactions. In this way, Jonathan Strange is very different from the speculative historical fiction that, say, Guy Gavriel Kay writes. Whereas we can feel for Kay’s characters in a personal way, here we are generally limited to merely observing the reclusive and misanthropic Gilbert Norrell, his headstrong and creative pupil Jonathan Strange, and the melodramatic characters that surround them.
But it didn’t have to be that way. There’s a scene not quite halfway through the book where Strange and the mad King George III are being lured into a fairy kingdom by a half-seen man with thistledown hair that does have the introspective, mysterious atmosphere which often accompanies magic in other speculative fiction works. In this instance, we actually get insight (through Strange’s eyes) into how magic feels when it’s performed on a person and by a person. It’s a dramatic change from the rest of the book to that point, and it’s a welcome one. Alas, it only lasts for a few pages.
Fantasy is at its best when the reader feels as though he or she could be part of an impossible world. I wish I’d felt like a part of Strange and Norrell’s world; it sounds surprizingly and shokingly interesting.
|
Copyright ©2004 FFWD. All rights reserved.