Book Review: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Previously appeared on www.oxygen.ie
September 2004

It's England in 1806. There hasn't been a proper practicing magician in nearly three hundred years. The only magicians left are theoretical magicians, who are worse than useless, unable to even tie their shoelaces without actually using their hands. English magic has become an arcane kind of lore, only of interest to children and fuddy duddy old men with long whiskers and creaking libraries.

Into this void of sorts comes Mr. Norrell, a quiet and self absorbed but frightfully self important practicing magician. This causes quite a hubbub among the magical community. He moves to London, gets himself introduced into polite society and proves himself by bringing back to life Lady Pole, wife of a high ranking minister in his majesty's government. All of England is worried about the threat of Napoleon and Norrell is soon helping out, protecting the coastline with spells, and concocting phantom fleets to scare the French.

All is nice and respectable, and damnably English, until a second practicing magician bumbles along. While Norrell considers himself a born magician and the saviour of English magic, Jonathan Strange kindof fell into magic as a career. "He'd tried everything else - farming, poetry, iron founding," explains his wife. Norrell agrees to take him on as a student.

The only two practicing magicians in England are never going to get along for long. So Strange heads off to Portugal to join up with Duke of Wellington and see battle at first hand. While there he decides he quite likes the freedom and room for improvisation of the independent magician gig, and is not going to let Norrell push him around any more. He also develops a an attraction to the darker side of English magic and is drawn to the fabled Raven King, who established magic in England. Norrell is not impressed. And we are off on a rollicking historical novel type path, with a twist.

The book is excellently written. A whole new parallel world is created. Magic is treated matter of factly and the style is pointedly ironic, with everything just slightly askew.

'"Can a magician kill a man by magic?" asked Wellington.

Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. "I suppose a magician might," he admitted. "But a gentleman never could."

Lord Wellington nodded as if this was just as he would have expected.'

I read with a broad smile on my face for most of the 800 odd pages. The mundane, everyday consequences of magic are given equal space with its effect on the affairs of state. The problems arising from the restoration of English magic are different than you might imagine. In the buildup to the Battle of Waterloo Strange moves the city of Brussels into the American plains and confuses both the Belgians and the native Americans. He is made to move it back, but asked to improve the local roads so reinforcements can arrive on time.

There's a very motley bunch of characters, and plenty of room to flesh them out. Favourites include Stephen Black, an orphaned black butler who is maybe destined to be King of England, a strange small gentleman with thistle down hair who is not a gentleman at all but a fairy with a frighteningly amoral attitude, and a madman who was born with a history of English magic written on his skin because his Dad ate a magic book. Real historical personages such as Wellington, the rakish Lord Byron and the barkers King George III play significant roles. As does the city of Venice. It's breathtaking in it's breadth and ambition.

Maybe, it's just a little too long. It gets very dramatic, and tragic, towards the end. There are plenty of overblown storms and furies and dashing about the countryside. And rather a lot of archaisms. Spelling 'choose' as 'chuse' and 'showed' as 'shewed' is possibly overmuch. There is a kind of quaint surface quality to the characters, and nobody is truly corrupted or depraved by the magic, although some people do die. Clarke is much better at the creation of the magical history [there are many detailed hilarious footnotes] than at building characters or fitting all the pieces together.

Still, it's an incredible achievement. Likening it to Harry Potter is pretty much an insult, as everyone knows JK Rowling's are just kids books which are really not that good at all. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is much closer to one of those doorstop 19th century novels on the Leaving Cert course, only with an extra magic something. Magic. And it's very funny. That it's a first book and Susanna Clarke was recently editing cookbooks for a job gives us [me] hope. It's available in fantastic looking black or white giant hardbacks. Enjoy.