Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell proved to be pretty enjoyable. It might not be quite so enjoyable for non-classicists because she wrote it as though it were an academic account of the rediscovery of magic, complete with lengthy footnotes and hundreds of pages without apparent direction, though full of interesting details. It brought back happy memories of grim plods through paceless pages. I wish she had known about the rediscovery of the classics in the late middle ages and early Renaissance, because it would have been the perfect model. As it happens it was quite a time for rediscovering ancient magic as well, though that was somewhat less successful. On the other hand magic might come out ahead, if you judge success by present-day adherents, since there may well be more neo-magick-wiccan-whatevers in the U.S. than people who can read Virgil.

The author, Susanna Clarke, writes quite a bit better than Rowling, and though her 18th/19th century tone occasionally falters, she does a pretty good pastiche. She depicts magic more effectively than Rowling as well, but for the most part prefers to leave it unexplained and often even undepicted. It is effective but after so many pages talking about the scholarship of theoretical magic I became tired of never seeing any. She does offer one explanation for Strange's magic, which amounts to a sort of musical improvisation, but with thoughts and actions instead of notes. However, that technique appears to be peculiar to him. There is a very late suggestion that no one has been doing magic but that all the magic has been done through the magicians by a powerful original magician. I think it was more a colorful statement of that original magician's power than an explanation, but it was not followed up.

I think the ending is kind of a punt, too, or else it is a set-up for a sequel, which would be even more annoying. The book is well worth reading, but I am not so sure I would read a sequel. By far the majority of the interest and all of the charm is in the gradual introduction of magic into a world that is only slightly divergent from the real London of 1800.