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Two Magicians, One Uneasy Tale |
| Section: BOOK WORLD / REVIEWS |
| Author: Nick Freeman |
| Publication: The world & I online |
| Issue Date: 2/1/2005 |
| Size: 1,344 Words, 8,763 Characters |
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JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR. NORRELL
By Susanna Clarke
Illustrated by Portia Rosenberg
Bloomsbury, $27.95, 782 pages, illus.
This season's "must-have literary accessory," is Susanna Clarke's lavishly hyped "Harry Potter for adults," Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. An epic tale of feuding magicians in early nineteenth century England, it blends fantasy and history in a story that sweeps from talking statues in a Yorkshire church to the Napoleonic battlefields and on to Faerie-land itself. There's something for almost everyone here, but Bloomsbury's lavish promotional campaign shouldn't distract potential readers from the novel's weaknesses.
In assessing the book, reviewers have been quick to wheel out their usual responses to a "fantasy" novel, trying to situate it somewhere b...
. . .
...es about Byron and darkness. It is as if she is repudiating her own gifts, hankering for the presumed literary respectability of the postmodern historical novel rather than accepting her successes in a form wrongly regarded as less sophisticated but more commercial. This is a shame, since much of Jonathan Strange is imaginative, original and even witty.
© 2004 News World Communications Inc.
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