Jonathan Strange

A quick look back over the last year of The Wasteland archives reveals the embarrassing fact that I've only managed to get through 3 books from cover to cover in a twelve month period - and one of those I read twice! This has to be an all time low in my adult life and something I definitely need to address. Of course technology is largely to blame in various forms, so it is nice that the book that had the power to grab my attention contains nothing more modern than 1818 and is over a thousand pages long!! It concerns two magicians who live in an early 19th century England that presupposes a rich and very real history of magic alongside the facts and events we are familiar with. One (Mr Norrell) is a fusty bookworm, very conservative and twitchy in nature, whose aim is to revive the great tradition of English magic with himself and his beloved library as its exclusive centre, and the other is a young and immensely talented upstart, who begins as the others' apprentice only to blossom into something much wilder and unpredictable, whose goal is to restore to power the legendary Raven King of old Newcastle. Susanna Clarke, in this remarkable debut, binds non fussy and rooted narrative with such outrageous fancies that we have no problem accepting that the Napoleonic wars were influenced by spells and fairies. Wellington, Byron and the mad king George III provide a backbone of real persons around which the protagonists together with a wealth of other vividly drawn characters weave a strange tale indeed - of rivalry, prophecy, loss, love, ambition and destiny. It is this range of characters that make it such a compelling read - Vinculus the filthy street conjurer; Childermass, Norrell's shady "man of business" (and my personal favourite); Stephen Black, the enchanted servant destined to be king; the elusive Raven King himself, John Uskglass; and, above all, the mischievous fairy known only as "The Gentleman with thistledown hair"... each is so different and so alive that it is a genuine thrill to follow them to the book's hugely satisfying conclusion. As a debut, you begin by wondering if the interesting premise will hold water for such a length as a thousand pages, especially as the early chapters meander in a quite pedestrian way through so many subjects it is impossible to see them becoming collectively relevant, but by the arrival of Strange in the second section of three they do; in fact becoming such indispensable details that you chide yourself for being so narrow-sighted. The second thing that happens is you begin projecting possible outcomes and start to wish for certain things to come about, which, again, they eventually do, only not perhaps in the way you imagined...! By the last 3rd I was in love with this book and continued to have my expectations of it surpassed by its ingenious devices, messages and pure imagination. It exists now for me in the same league as other great fantasy tomes I have read and adored - The Lord of The Rings, Gormenghast and the His Dark Materials trilogy. It really is that good and 50 years from now will surely be revered as a classic of the early 21st century - I urge everyone to find the time to drift off into its world and allow yourself to be carried away. I believe the rights for the film are already sold (I, for one, will be submitting my C.V.), but try to read it before the images of that cloud your experience of it - I can never now think of Tolkien's classic without seeing Viggo Mortensen et al, and as much as I love the movies it is the written word and that long slow pleasure of reading that gives it its true magic. 10/10 Kx