• Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

  • By: Susanna Clarke
  • Narrated by: Simon Prebble
  • Length: 32 hrs and 29 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (10,829 ratings)

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Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell  By  cover art

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

By: Susanna Clarke
Narrated by: Simon Prebble
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Publisher's summary

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 32 hours leave readers longing for more.

©2004 Susanna Clarke (P)2004 Audio Renaissance, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers, LLC, and Bloomsbury Publishing

Critic reviews

  • Hugo Award Winner, Best Novel, 2005
  • World Fantasy Award Winner, 2005
  • Audie Award Finalist, Literary Fiction, 2005

"A smashing success....An exceptionally compelling, brilliantly creative, and historically fine-tuned piece of work." (Booklist)
"Extraordinary....Immersion in the mesmerizing story reveals its intimacy, humor, and insight, and will enchant readers of fantasy and literary fiction alike." (Publishers Weekly)
"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)
"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." (The New York Times Book Review)

What listeners say about Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Slow

This story is very slow in developing. Unfortunately, I could not identify with Strange or Norrell and found myself indifferent to their fates. A heavy and at times oppressive read.

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12 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Prepare to YAWN

I've never reviewed a book before, but this one was such a disappointment and yet received such high reviews from other listeners, I felt like someone should represent the other side of the story.

In the 4 yrs I've been with Audible I have never felt like I wanted to ask for my money back - until I listened to this book. The first two hours is a dry discussion of how there are theoretical magicians in England but a lack of practical magicians. The point was well made in the first 10 minutes - but why exhaust a subject in 10 minutes when you can beat it for 2 hours! :-) I continued to listen for another four hours thinking if so many people liked it, it HAD to get better, but my disappointment and frustration only grew. The story drags from one seemingly pointless episode to the next with characters that are so flat and lacking in virtue that they all seem to come from the same mold.

I found the narrator's tone, which is better suited to a humorous story, very distracting. I enjoy English humor and based on the reader's tone, kept anticipating the type of wit you find in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. I generally don't miss subtle humor, but if it was intended by the author, it was lost on me. The footnotes are also distracting and do not always add anything to the story.

Obviously a lot of listeners have enjoyed this book. I can only recommend that you carefully listen to the sample before you spend an Audible credit on it. Personally, 6 hours was more than enough for me. I just couldn't imagine enduring the remaining 20+ hours of this book!

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12 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

For adult fans of magic with a terrific narrator

Simon Prebble is fabulous with voices. I knew who was speaking when several people were in the room. The book is terrific and moved me emotionally, almost to tears, and I certainly laughed out loud as well. I enjoyed it years ago as text and returned to it with a new love for the narrated version. If you have a taste for British culture with magicians thrown in to this "historical" fiction, then this is the book for you.

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11 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Hard to Follow

I wasn't keen on this audiobook. I found I had to keep re-winding in order to recall what was going on in the story. There are many characters, and the plot is not well suited to an audio format. I think I will buy the hard copy of the book as I suspect I would enjoy reading the story.

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11 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Great 1800s Magicians Tale w/ hint Charles Dickens

This was a delightful book to listen to, especially since the narrator Simon Prebble made the English characters really come alive. Many reviews have described this book as an adult version of Harry Potter and I guess in some ways it is like that series but I haven't read those books only seen the movies. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell had many unique characters and neat twists and turns. The use of footnotes to move the story along was especially unique. At many times I found myself wanting to reach out and shake sense into the characters so that they might discover the 'right path' or catch the meaning of someone speaking to them. At other times I found myself desiring to become a magician like that was at all possible. For me, one of the signs of a good author is if they can draw you into their story with an elaborate plot, descriptions, and metaphors, and Susanna Clarke definitely does that. Of course like any novel the twists and turns don't always go to your liking and the author seems to have left the door open for follow on editions. Though there are twists in the story I would change, if I had only half the talent of Ms. Clarke I would be writing this masterful novel not reading it.

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10 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Tedious!

Honestly the most difficult listen I've had to endure! Was it terrible? Almost but not quite. I'm shocked that this book averages almost 4 stars on audible, that seems WAY off to me.
I am a huge fan of long, descriptive books that lay down background for characters and to set the scene, which is not what happened here. Details about absolutely irrelevant events that do nothing to move the plot forward nor to further character development are constantly introduced. Character development is almost non-existent and characters are annoyingly ignorant of things happening around them. The most common, and annoying, example of this is the last thing the magicians suspect when bizarre circumstances occur is that there might be magic being done.
One of the main characters is highly annoying and we spend the first 10 hours with him while he whines about all the things he doesn't like. Then he is only a sub character for the rest of the book which is a relief but also makes me wonder why we needed to be bored for 10 hours?
Plot lines were easily guessed at and the climax is very disappointing. Oh, and did I mention the footnotes? The author decided to put in footnotes, only occasionally relevant to the plot, sometimes just to remind the reader of things that happened earlier in the book! How incredibly insulting to the reader and disruptive to the story, I can't believe the editor went along with this.
Occasionally you'll see a long book that could have been edited down to make it better. Unfortunately, I don't think there is enough of interest to garner even a 7 hour listen. Very disappointing, worst book I've read/listened to in the past 50+ novels I've read. This is even more disappointing as Ms. Clarke is obviously a skilled author so I just can't understand the choices she made in writing this book.

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9 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Skip it!! The Only Audio Book I didn't Finish!!

I got about 4 hours into this book and was still hating every minute of it. I finally took it off my device and *paid* for a different download!! I reads like Dickens... so if you are an english lit. professor - go for it. If you wounldn't spend a credit on a classic English novel, pass on this!! Seriously boring and annoying.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

**NOT**Harry Potter for Grownups!

I can't emphasize enough that this book is not "Harry Potter for grownups." When searching the internet for reviews of this book, this was the most common description I got. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, aside from being concerned with English magic, has very little in common with the Harry Potter series. If you begin this book with the expectation of action-packed accounts of dueling wizards fighting to rid the world of an evil sorcerer, then you will be sorely disappointed. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is much closer to a Jane Austen or Charles Dickens novel than it is to any of J.K. Rowling's offerings.

That being said...this is one of the best books I've read in quite a while. It is a wonderful example of pastiche that uses the style it is imitating to great humorous effect without belittling it in any way. The characters, especially those of Strange and Norrell, but the supporting cast as well, are well developed and fully realized. I especially enjoyed those aspects of the story that play on the comedy of manners genre and found them particulary humourous, though it is a very British brand of humor.

On the whole, I suppose the book would be best described as an alternate history. Much of it takes place among the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars and there are scenes involving King George III in the grips of madness. Strange, after an apprenticeship under Norrell, becomes the official magician to the Duke of Wellington and plays an integral role in his triumph in the Peninsular War and, later, at Waterloo.

After returning to England, Strange and Norrell's relationship dissolves and each of them sets himself on a path to destroy the other. This continuing battle is exacerbated by the actions of a devilish character acting on the fringes of their world and who may, or may not, be human.

However one wishes to describe it though, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell was the winner of the 2005 Hugo Award and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

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8 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Magical in the end

Oh, what a wild world Clarke creates. While I believe this book could have been shortened by half (too many details, superfluous characters, and tangents), the end product is well worth the time. The end 1/4 of the book makes the rest worthwhile.

I liked the footnotes, even in the audio version. Those were some of my favorite parts.

I did find that in the first 3/4 of the book my mind could wander, and when I came back, I hadn't lost the plot. It wasn't because the narrator isn't good. He's excellent.

I was glad I stuck with it. The ending is definitely worth it.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Magic, Victorian Style

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is a Victorian novel written at least 125 years too late. Set in a Britain where magic is part of history, the novel rambles along like a grandmother walking through a rose garden. It deals humorously and respectfully with its major themes: friendship and its attendant duties, and knowledge and who gets custody of it.

Listeners who aren't used to the Victorian "three-volume" style may find themselves adrift. My advice to people in this situation is to sit back and enjoy the tangents, footnotes, and side plots. They're all humorous and perceptive, much in the style of Charles Dickens.

Of course, just when your attention is completely turned toward all of that, the main story will rise up and bonk you on the head with its rolled-up umbrella.

Older readers and fans of the Austen/Dickens style will probably enjoy this more than the Harry Potter teens-and-tweens group. English Lit majors and academics will choke themselves laughing--be careful if drinking liquids while listening, that's all I can say.

Narrator Simon Prebble does an excellent job--in a novel with so many characters, he manages to make them all sound different. It's rather a time commitment at 32 hours, but even so, I thought it was too short, with an ending that felt a bit rushed. Still, highly recommended.

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8 people found this helpful