Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

By Susanna Clark
850 pages

I received this book for Christmas and finished it last night. It is a very long book.

Now, what to say about it? If you like fantasy, or mystery, or both, as I do, you probably will like this. This isn't a fantasy of the Tolkien vein, as we've no elves. Just faeries, two magicians, and lots of weather magic.

The two characters for which the book is titled are wonderfully flawed fellows who you ultimately really like or wish to strangle. You will wonder at times who is villain and who is king, and who is really doing what to whom and who (or what) is ultimately in control. You will wonder and still not know.

Magic will be found throughout the pages of the book, but it is a dull sort of magic, such as building sturdy walls. There aren't fireballs and wands and meteors whizzing about. This is magic as magic might be if indeed it did really exist. It is exciting magic all the same.

But deeper - a good book is always deeper - there are commentaries on madness and the ability of the masses to create or cause a new method or mode of doing things. Maybe there is even a commentary here on the power of prayer or the supernatural ability of all of mankind, if we put our minds to it, to do the unthinkable, for good or ill.

The first 100 pages are slow and you will want to not finish this book. That would be a mistake, I think. So keep reading, or skip a few pages if you must. And there are footnotes, too, which, I confess, I either skimmed or read entirely. The great thing about reading a book is it is your do with what you wish, after all. The footnotes make the fiction read like a scholarly tome, but there are many gems amongst the footnotes (which are smaller than the regular type and just a little hard on tired ol' eyes, I fear).

Go forth, be Strange. Read a book.