Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell By Susanna Clarke

Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is long. You don't see many paperbacks exceed 1,000 pages. Then there's the footnotes: JS&MN is full of them. Maybe that's what you'd expect from a well-researched annotated history of 19th-century Britain--except JS&MN isn't a history book; it's an alternate-history fantasy novel. Footnotes aren't new to genre fiction: Terry Pratchett, for example, uses them. Clarke's usage, however, often leads to pages-long digressions into British history. The footnotes not only add to JS&MN's density, but also add to the reader's impression that he is reading a narrative history of Britain. So complete is the illusion that, more than once, I began to wonder: Why haven't other historians delved into the history of magic in Britain. It's so richly interesting!

The book moves forward through the lives of its title characters, who are both practitioners of the hitherto lost tradition of English magic. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell are giants in the alternate-history of Britain, so it's no surprise that they find themselves amidst the momentous events and among the most important and influential people of their day (e.g. Napoleon and Waterloo). But JS&MN is at least as much about its characters and their culture as it is about the history of Britain. There's lots of Jane Austin's influence at work, from the subtle social commentary to the empathetic--though flawed--title characters; and like her great books, JS&MN tells an essentially human story.

JS&MN has been called Harry Potter for adults, but that's not exactly correct. It's not correct both because adults have, and do, read Harry Potter, and also because JS&MN won't appeal to nearly as many adults as Potter does; though where there's inaccuracy, there's also some truth. Children will appreciate JS&MN when history becomes the most popular subject in school and they read Jane Austin for pleasure--which is to say that almost none of them will. It's a different kind of book. Partly for that reason, it's well worth the time investment--great as that investment may be.