“Can a magician kill a man by magic?” Lord Wellington asked Strange.
Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. “I suppose a magician might,” he admitted, “but a gentleman never would.”
Since I’ve just heard the welcome news that it will soon be a TV miniseries, this SF/F Saturday presents a good opportunity to write about one of my favorite modern novels.
Published in 2004, Susanna Clarke’s debut novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is an alternate-history fantasy set in early 19th-century England, during the era of the Napoleonic wars. Clarke’s England has a storied past: a golden age of powerful magicians who bent heaven and earth to their will, chief among them a semi-legendary figure called the Raven King who ruled the northern half of England for several hundred years.
But for reasons no one quite understands, magic has slowly died out from the world. By the present day of the novel, England has only “theoretical” magicians, musty old men who have no talent for magic themselves but occupy their time in endless academic squabbles over arcane points of historical interpretation. “Practical” magic has fallen into disrepute, largely due to the ranting and posturing of streetcorner charlatans who’ve tainted its reputation and made it seem an unfitting occupation for a gentleman.
This all changes when, for the first time in centuries, a practical magician reappears in England, one Gilbert Norrell of Yorkshire. When he demonstrates his powers in a dramatic public spectacle, he inspires widespread interest and excitement, bringing hopes of a glorious revival of English magic. But while it’s true that Norrell possesses immense talent, he’s hardly the heroic figure out of legend that most people were expecting. He’s almost pathologically reclusive, miserly with his magic, and fiercely jealous of any hint of competition. Nevertheless, when he arrives in London and offers his services to the British government, he’s welcomed and hailed.
Although Norrell goes to great lengths to prevent any other magicians from arising in England, one emerges in spite of him, a dilettante nobleman named Jonathan Strange. When they actually meet, Norrell is won over by Strange’s innate talent and agrees to take him on as a pupil; but the pupil quickly matches his master and possibly even surpasses him. What’s more, the handsome and dashing Strange fits the public image of a magician in ways Norrell never could. When Strange and Norrell play a crucial role in England’s victory over the dastardly Napoleon Buonaparte, they cement their role as public heroes.
But just as English magic is at the height of public esteem, the two magicians part ways in a very public quarrel, as Strange grows obsessed with darker, wilder, more unpredictable kinds of magic which Norrell shuns as too dangerous to trifle with. Their rivalry develops into a bitter enmity, and a devil’s bargain that Norrell struck at the beginning of his public career will come back to haunt them both.
I’ve often described Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell as Harry Potter if it were written by Jane Austen. Clarke’s writing is lively, droll, and just self-aware enough, with occasional long, discursive footnotes explaining people or events from her alternate history that her characters only allude to. She seamlessly interweaves her characters with real people from history, as Strange and Norrell rub elbows with the great and the good. And she’s equally good both at conjuring up the staid atmosphere of an English comedy of manners, and tearing it away to reveal the eerie, wild world of magic that most people go about their lives completely unaware of.
P.S.: Donโt forget, I’m on Goodreads now! If youโve got an account, you can add me as a friend and see what Iโm reading (and writing).