Review: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Truly one of my favourite books

I last read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell in the fall of 2006. The book is somehow linked to memories from that time in my life, so that when I think about the book, it reminds me of events that happened to me, as much as the events that happened in the story itself. For instance, I remember having to buy two copies of it, because one of them was ruined in the rain.1 I remember being woken up by a certain hit pop song2 on a hotel alarm clock’s radio, and upon hitting the snooze, noticing the book on the nightstand, and wanting to use the snooze interval to squeeze in one more chapter before heading out to work. I remember eliciting a bemused and maybe condescending comment from a desk clerk at a video store3. And I remember, finally, finishing the book on a plane in flight, and then spending the rest of the flight missing it.4

I wonder, this time around, which memories will become entangled with my reading of this book? Will it be reading it while queueing at TIFF 2013, and being disappointed one day when a light rain prevented me from taking it out of my bag?5 Will it be my frantic attempt to download an e-book copy from the library on my way out the door somewhere, because I was so desperate to continue reading on the go, but did not want to carry the significant heft of the book?6

What it adds up to is an experience that I rarely have with books: that of being so immersed in it that I felt like I was inhabiting the world of the book as much as the real world. Like I was being enchanted by the same spell that the gentleman with thistle-down hair worked on Lady Pole and Stephen Black. Like I was constantly crossing back and forth on the King’s Roads between England and Faerie.

Truly one of my favourite books.

Footnotes

  1. I had taken it to a dragon boat competition in London, Ontario, as reading material between races, but unfortunately, the weather that day was humid and grey, and the rain soaked through my backpack and into the book, swelling it up like a sponge. The ruined copy had a black cover; its replacement was red. Or maybe vice versa. ↩

  2. Beyoncé’s “Irreplaceable.” ↩

  3. Hollywood Video at the Pruneyard Shopping Centre, Campbell, CA. I was renting a DVD to watch in the hotel, and was holding the book in my hand. I put it down on the counter to retrieve my wallet, and the clerk said, “Well, that’s a big book.” The video store has now closed down, replaced by something called “Sports Basement,” which has swallowed up the huge space left vacant by the video store, and also, sadly, by a defunct Barnes & Noble bookstore. ↩

  4. The trip was for business purposes. ↩

  5. I was perhaps afraid of rain ruining yet another copy. ↩

  6. The whole concept of e-books, especially being available at the public library, would have been quite foreign back in 2006. As foreign as the concept of video stores is, now. ↩

Albert

About Me

Hi! Albert here. Canadian. Chinese.

Writing software since 2001. “Blogging” since 2004. Reading since forever.

You can find me on socials with the links below, or contact me here.