Tomorrow Elephant

Well, I just finished Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell after grudgingly granting myself a one-evening reading binge. I can’t say I regretted it: some books take their time rolling along the runway, but when they take off, they really soar … and take you elsewhere.

I can see that not everybody will like this book. At times, the marriage of whimsy, Dickens, Austen and absolutely mind-blowing magic is uneasy; and the book is almost certainly too long. Given the beauty of Susanna Clarke’s prose, though, one can imagine that cutting out any of it must have been a heart-wrenching editorial task. For a while (the book bogs down a little towards the end) I was worried that the ending was going to fall flat, but no: there is an appropriately magical twist, and promise of sequels - apparently Clarke has a contract for a trilogy.

As far as criticism is concerned, I can’t really say much that John Clute hasn’t already said better, but I’m happy to be blissfully uncritical of this book: its many delights far outshine its faults. For me, the most delightful thing were the numerous passages that evoke true sense of wonder, that tingle down your spine as if the house of Lost-Hope was really hovering just beneath the skin of the world; as if you could really go to the place where magicians go.

Behind the sky. On the other side of the rain.