Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

By: Susanna Clarke

Narrated by: Simon Prebble

Length: 32 hrs and 29 mins

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)

Loved it

Wonderful characters with a beautifully stitched together plot. I think I will read it to my kids after we finish Harry Potter. It is a bit more difficult in vocabulary, but not scary or inappropriate for kids in my opinion.

One of the best books I've ever read.

I've read this book twice, and will definitely read it many more times.
Read it. Then go watch the miniseries. you won't regret it.

One of the best books I have read in a long time!

Amazing book! Would reccomend almost universally. Higly reccomend to do what another reviewer suggested and give the book a full 8 hours first to understand exactly where the story is going. It has a large set up! But so worth it to continue the listen.

Patience is key with this one

Whew! Finally finished this. Author could have been more entertaining and captivating in the first 2/3rds of the book. I only finished it to find out how all the different characters and storylines would intertwine. It got a bit more interesting closer to the end. Wouldn’t read it again and would refer with caution.

My highest regard

I love everything about this novel and its audio presentation. It is a solid, long story. It is engaginng from the first to the last words. The voice talent is the work of a professional. I recommend this to practically anyone interested in fantasy.

I read someplace that the author loves Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, and that she was inspired by The Lord of the Rings to write this wonderful piece. I think the inspiration of all three authors shows throughout her book.

excellent narration!

better than the already excellent BBC adaptation and the narration is by far the best I've heard so far - Simon Prebble really brings the characters to life

This was a great reading and an amazing story

I haven't really ever enjoyed listening to a book being read but as a working parent it is hard to find the time to sit and open a book without putting it down often for long periods of time.

Great Book

I looked this book over for months in the stores, but found its length intimidating. Especially since I did not know the author and I have a compulsion that will not allow me to stop reading a book, no matter how bad, until I finish it.
In audio format I thought I would give it a whirl and was very pleasantly surprised. The author is great and the book is extremely well written. For sci-fi/fantasy readers this book has enough of the history of magic, set in WWII England, to keep your interests. However, its the author's amazing writing abilities--being the master of humorous comparisions, analogies and descriptions--that will have any and all readers smiling to themselves.

While traveling on the road, often at 3:00 a.m., this book was extremely entertaining and kept me coming back for more.

Listen for the literature, not the fantasy

Any additional comments?

This book is incredibly well-written but the more literary style is quite slow compared to other books that fall under the fantasy category. You are probably more likely to love this book if you have a thing for period dramas and historical fiction than you tend to prefer Tolkeinesque fantasy. This book is elegantly composed but it's definitely slow. As another reader pointed out, it takes about 8-10 hours of listening before the story starts to draw you in, and I'm not sure I ever truly did.

In the end, I can appreciate the amount of work that the author put into this book (it really is a beautiful piece of literature), but it was just a bit too dry to sate my desire for a good mental escape.

One note on the reading. Mr. Prebble did a great job with the accents (though not being from the UK, I don't know how precise his renditions were), but he kept mis-pronouncing "sidhe" (which is a Gaelic word pronounced more like "she" than "sid-hay"). Call it a pet peeve, but when an author goes to the trouble of using a very specific word, I feel bumped out of the story whenever it's mis-used.

Delightfully and richly old fashioned

The story is a long LONG collection of fairy stories linked together by a slow moving plot about magicians in the early 1800's. Read it for the journey not the destination-- it is satisfying when you finally get there. Beautiful passages. Written in a style that is very appropriate for the time period and if you love all the full flavors of history you may revel in it as I did. Readers who prefer more fast paced formulaic fantasy might not know how to get on with this work. I confess I set it aside after the first few chapters and only came back when I had nothing else to read. I'm so glad I did. So very rich.