Jonathan Strange
and Mr Norrell
by Susanna Clarke

0-7475-7988-1
CDN $19.95 paper

0-7475-8209-2
CDN $29.95 paperback boxed set

0-7475-7055-8
CDN $39.95 cloth

Bloomsbury UK

REVIEWS

The Georgia Straight review, Oct 14, 2004
The Last of the Red-Hot Magi by John Burns
I’m tracking an eBay auction, the item on the cyberblock tonight being a limited-edition hardcover copy of Susanna Clarke’s just-released Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (Raincoast Books, $29.95), an 800-page novel about the return of magic to England in the early 1800s. This copy, signed and numbered 975 of 1,450, seems to have topped out at £179.99 ($405.20), 1,000 percent of the original price. Read the whole review.

The Onion review, Sept. 29, 2004
“Clarke’s 800-page book ... unfolds in elaborate, exquisite detail ... If Rowling hadn’t made literary fantasy safe, popular, and profitable, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell might never have been published. But then again, Clarke’s gorgeous debut might simply have taken the Harry Potter books’ slot as a proving ground, an example of how dedication, creativity, and skill can breathe new life into any genre.”

Claude Lalumiere: Montreal Gazette review, Sept. 18, 2004
First-class fantasy: Clarke creates an odd, enchanting universe where priggish England longs to revive its magical past
Gorgeously and richly bizarre, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is an enchanting experience from first to last word, brimming with charm, wit, creeping dread, and sense of wonder. Read more comments about Jonathan Strange on Claude Lalumiere’s weblog.

Macleans.ca, review, Sept. 16, 2004
“If there’s a single book sitting atop the English-language world’s reading list, it’s Susanna Clarke’s entrancing Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Public libraries report waiting lists of hundreds of names, booksellers are fretting about getting their copies in time for the Sept. 18 release date, and — from those few who have seen an advance copy — there’s been nothing but praise.”

Salon review, Sept. 4, 2004
When Harry Potter met Jane Austen
Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell combines the dark, wild spirit of English fantasy with the grand wit and high style of the 19th century social novel. It’s a grand performance — and the most sparkling literary debut of the year.

n+1 review, Sept. 2004
The Romance of the Library
Like something from a fairy tale, three farfetched things had to happen before an 800-page literary fantasy by a British first-time novelist in her forties could shoot to the top of the bestseller lists. First, the success of the Harry Potter books gave credence to the idea that fantasy novels could be purchased by adults with no history of lurking in the sword-and-sorcery aisles at Barnes and Noble.

Journal posting by Neil Gaiman, author of the Sandman Series and American Gods
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is unquestionably the finest English novel of the fantastic written in the last seventy years. It’s funny, moving, scary, otherworldly, practical and magical, a journey through light and shadow — a delight to read, both for the elegant and precise use of words, which Ms Clarke deploys as wisely and dangerously as Wellington once deployed his troops, and for the vast sweep of the story, as tangled and twisting as old London streets or dark English woods. It is a huge book, filled with people it is a delight to meet, and incidents and places one wishes to revisit, which is, from beginning to end, a perfect pleasure. Closing Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell after 800 pages my only regret was that it wasn’t twice the length.

“[Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell] follows the friendship of two gentleman sorcerers in London in the early 19th century ... The novel is being compared with abandon in the press to the Harry Potter books, but it is not for children, unless they are children who really, really love footnotes. It is nearly 800 pages long, but in some ways that number feels arbitrary, as if the novel consisted of just those pages Clarke chose to show, and that she might have easily chosen another 800 from those she kept in reserve ... What did not make it into the main story is alluded to in copious notes that make up sort of a second novel at the bottom of its pages (when they do not take over the pages altogether) ... Clarke is equally meticulous in the research she has not made up, which has produced an observant and often very funny comment on the stiff mores of regency England: when Mr. Norrell comes to restore magic to England and becomes a reluctant celebrity, it is not so much that London is enthralled with magic as it is enthralled with the same old spells -- the lure of notoriety, the cultivation of social status ... In short, it is a patient, grown-up novel of dueling wizards.” —New York Times Magazine, August 1, 2004

“But what genre is Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, exactly? How about a fantastical-historical-satirical-military comedy of manners — replete with pages and pages of footnotes. The presence of a mysterious magician-king, various enchanted mirrors and diabolical faeries do indeed suggest the world of Harry and Hermione. But the characters’ extravagantly twisted names (Honeyfoot, Drawlight) bring to mind Mervyn Peake, and the desert-dry wit is Trollope or ... somebody quite distant from J. K. Rowling.” —The Globe and Mail, August 29

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell is “absolutely compelling ... I could not stop reading it until I had finished it. The author captures the period and its literary conventions with complete conviction. I was fascinated by the mixture of historical realism and utterly fantastic events: I almost began to believe that there really was a tradition of ‘English magic’ that I had not head about. I can’t think of anything that is remotely like it ” —Charles Palliser, author of The Quincunx

“The drawing room social comedies of early 19th-century Britain are infused with the powerful forces of English folklore and fantasy in this extraordinary novel of two magicians who attempt to restore English magic in the age of Napoleon. In Clarke’s world, gentlemen scholars pore over the magical history of England, which is dominated by the Raven King, a human who mastered magic from the lands of faerie. The study is purely theoretical until Mr. Norrell, a reclusive, mistrustful bookworm, reveals that he is capable of producing magic and becomes the toast of London society, while an impetuous young aristocrat named Jonathan Strange tumbles into the practice, too, and finds himself quickly mastering it. Though irritated by the reticent Norrell, Strange becomes the magician’s first pupil, and the British government is soon using their skills. Mr. Strange serves under Wellington in the Napoleonic Wars (in a series of wonderful historical scenes), but afterward the younger magician finds himself unable to accept Norrell’s restrictive views of magic’s proper place and sets out to create a new age of magic by himself. Clarke manages to portray magic as both a believably complex and tedious labor, and an eerie world of signs and wonders where every object may have secret meaning. London politics and talking stones are portrayed with equal realism and seem indisputably part of the same England, as signs indicate that the Raven King may return. The chock-full, old-fashioned narrative (supplemented with deft footnotes to fill in the ignorant reader on incidents in magical history) may seem a bit stiff and mannered at first, but immersion in the mesmerizing story reveals its intimacy, humor and insight, and will enchant readers of fantasy and literary fiction alike.

( ... ) It’s convenient to pigeonhole it as Harry Potter for grownups — and grown-up readers of J.K. Rowling will enjoy it — but its deep grounding in history gives it gravitas as well as readability.” —Starred Review, Publishers Weekly, July 12, 2004