Awards
Time magazine’s #1 book of the year. Shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. Longlisted for the Booker prize. A Book Sense pick. People Top Ten Books of the year. Salon.com Top Ten of 2004. New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Christian Science Monitor Best Fiction 2004. Nancy Pearl’s Top 12 Books of 2004. Washington Post Book World Best of 2004. San Francisco Chronicle Best Books of 2004. Chicago Tribune Best of 2004. Seattle Times 25 Best Books of 2004. Atlanta Journal-Constitution Top 12 Books of 2004. Village Voice "Top Shelf." Raleigh News & Observer Best of 2004. Rocky Mountain News critics' favorites of 2004. Kansas City Star 100 Noteworthy Books of 2004. Fort Worth Star-Telegram 10 Best Books of 2004. Hartford Courant Best Books of 2004.
Time Magazine's #1 Book of the Year
Book Sense Book of the Year
Winner of the Locus Award
Winner of the 2005 Hugo Award for Best Novel
Staff Pick
A fantasy book of manners? Yes, and it works! Original and clever, this lush novel comments on the society and culture of magic. Strange and Norrell have opposing viewpoints on magic's role, and their clash provides a fabulous backdrop for this wonderful book. Just read it! It's great. Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
English magicians were once the wonder of the known world, with fairy servants at their beck and call; they could command winds, mountains, and woods. But by the early 1800s they have long since lost the ability to perform magic. They can only write long, dull papers about it, while fairy servants are nothing but a fading memory.
But at Hurtfew Abbey in Yorkshire, the rich, reclusive Mr Norrell has assembled a wonderful library of lost and forgotten books from England's magical past and regained some of the powers of England's magicians. He goes to London and raises a beautiful young woman from the dead. Soon he is lending his help to the government in the war against Napoleon Bonaparte, creating ghostly fleets of rain-ships to confuse and alarm the French.
All goes well until a rival magician appears. Jonathan Strange is handsome, charming, and talkative the very opposite of Mr Norrell. Strange thinks nothing of enduring the rigors of campaigning with Wellington's army and doing magic on battlefields. Astonished to find another practicing magician, Mr Norrell accepts Strange as a pupil. But it soon becomes clear that their ideas of what English magic ought to be are very different. For Mr Norrell, their power is something to be cautiously controlled, while Jonathan Strange will always be attracted to the wildest, most perilous forms of magic. He becomes fascinated by the ancient, shadowy figure of the Raven King, a child taken by fairies who became king of both England and Faerie, and the most legendary magician of all. Eventually Strange's heedless pursuit of long-forgotten magic threatens to destroy not only his partnership with Norrell, but everything that he holds dear.
Sophisticated, witty, and ingeniously convincing, Susanna Clarke's magisterial novel weaves magic into a flawlessly detailed vision of historical England. She has created a world so thoroughly enchanting that eight hundred pages leave readers longing for more.
Review
"In a fantastically paced conclusion, the ominous horror of what's preying on England comes into focus, even as the setting shifts into the cloudy world of enchantment that Clarke captures with such haunting effect." Christian Science Monitor
Review
"Ravishing...superb...combines the dark mythology of fantasy with the delicious social comedy of Jane Austen into a masterpiece of the genre that rivals Tolkien." Time
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"Clarke creates a Napoleonic-era England alive with the promise and danger of uncontrollable forces....A gorgeous book of unforgettable images." People
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"Clarke welcomes herself into an exalted company of British writers not only, some might argue, Dickens and Austen, but also the fantasy legends Kenneth Grahame and George MacDonald as well as contemporary writers like Susan Cooper and Philip Pullman." New York Times Book Review
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"Absolutely compelling...the author captures the period and its literary conventions with complete conviction. An astonishing achievement." Charles Palliser, author of The Quincunx and The Unburied
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"Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell may or may not be the finest English fantasy of the past 70 years. But it is still magnificent and original, and that should be enough for any of us." Michael Dirda, The Washington Post
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"Clarke has written a 19th century classic; there's little doubt it will have readers clamoring for more." Rocky Mountain News
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"What kind of magic can make a nearly 800-page novel seem too short?....[Clarke's] epic history of an alternative, magical England is so beautifully realized that not one of the many enchantments Clarke chronicles in the book could ever be as potent or as quickening as her own magnificent narrative." BookPage
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"For all of her flights of postmodernist fancy, for all her stories about 'black towers' and magical books and hidden bridges that connect England to Faerie, Clarke has delivered a book of universal truths and unexpectedly heartbreaking acuity." Dallas-Ft. Worth Star Telegram
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"Clarke is marvelously clever she could step right up there with J.K. Rowling. Her extensive, fictional footnotes are as amusing as they are informative....[S]plendid reading..." Detroit Free Press
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"Clarke's ability to construct a fully imagined world...is impressive, and there are some suspenseful moments. But her attempt to graft a fantasy narrative onto such historical realities as the Battle of Waterloo is more often awkward than clever..." The New Yorker
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"Clarke has crafted a great, looping narrative filled with characters greater and lesser that will pique first the interest and then the sympathy of the reader....The readers will find that this tale, though long, comes to an end far too soon." Denver Post
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"[I]mmense, intelligent, inventive, arid, and exhausting....Clarke is a restrained and witty writer with an arch and eminently readable style....Wholly original and richly imagined, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell turns out to be more admirable than lovable. (Grade: B)" Entertainment Weekly
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"Strange lives up to all the enticing promise of Clarke's earlier work. Her deftly assumed faux-19th century point of view will beguile cynical adult readers into losing themselves in this entertaining and sophisticated fantasy." Seattle Times
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"The prospect of having to read an 800-page novel billed as 'Harry Potter for adults' was enough to make this weary book critic pine for an invisibility cloak. But for those of you who, like me, can't endure another charmless opening at the Dursleys', take heart: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is no Harry Potter knockoff. It's altogether original far closer to Dickens than Rowling....Move over, little Harry. It's time for some real magic." Ron Charles, The Christian Science Monitor (read the entire Christian Science Monitor review)
About the Author
Susanna Clarke was born in Nottingham, England. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is her first book, which she researched and wrote over ten years. Susanna Clarke was born in Nottingham in 1959, the eldest daughter of a Methodist Minister. From 1993 to 2003 Susanna Clarke was an editor at Simon and Schuster's Cambridge office, where she worked on their cookery list. She has published seven short stories and novellas in U.S. anthologies. One, "The Duke of Wellington Misplaces His Horse," first appeared in a limited-edition, illustrated chapbook from Green Man Press. Another, "Mr Simonelli, or The Fairy Widower," was shortlisted for a World Fantasy Award in 2001. She lives in Cambridge, England.