Is Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke a good book?

21 thoughts from someone who went to sleep past midnight last night to finish it.

I've just finished reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Thanks for all these who pushed me into reading it. I might try and write something more serious at a later date. But for now I just want to throw some basic thoughts down. So here are twenty-one stream of consciousness notes. There may be slight spoilers.

1) It is a real novel: didn't have the sense of preaching; characters representing the author; fairy-tale symmetrical plots... The usual fare of modern fiction (particularly fantasy fiction?)! The many loose ends just add to the sense of messy but lived world.

2) The book could have been a lot shorter, but the length gives the characters, particularly Strange, space to breathe (and grow?)

3) Prose almost always good, but style sometimes shifts (wonder whether the author realises): Jane Austen pastiche to middle brow Victorian to sometimes low church fantasy. I was up for the spelling. Case to be made for a different font?

4) Wonder whether the book wouldn't have been better without John Uskglass strand. I'm ready to swallow that magic was big in English history but had to work hard to get down the complete rewriting of English constitutional history.

5) My understanding is that the descriptions of fairy magic are pretty unrealistic (but I didn't know enough about that for it to hurt my reading)

6) Irritated by the use of 'sidh' for fairies in England. Everything else worked for me: fairy roads etc. And I'm highly intolerant (hives etc) to badly deployed fairylore.

7) The descriptions of 'fairy' (as opposed to Britain, Belgium, Italy or Spain) are very good. The author doesn't get tediously transcendental. There is just a sense that something is slightly off.

8 ) Fairy in the book is overwhelmingly represented by 'the gentleman'. He communicates the 'when he was good he was ok but when he was bad he was wicked' part of fairylore very, very well. There are rules. The rules are not ours. If we want to understand the rules at (best) 30% we have to see the world through the eyes of a five-year-old child (who has just finished tearing wings off a butterfly or throttling a rabbit)

9) Best character the gentleman, of course.

10) Best human character, John Childermass. The true north strong and free.

11) I don't usually approve of historic individuals appearing in novels: thank God, Pitt didn't turn up. Loved George III. Byron a mistake.

12) The portrayal of Strange and Norrell as different types of idiot scholars very good: could imagine either ruining generations of students in different ways. Wonder whether the author grew up with academics?

13) I get really worried by portrayals of magic: I gave up on the TV series after a silly scene about a beached boat. The author for me got magic without being too jarring: not fireballs from D&D, but the petty and the great (do I remember Brussels travelling to North America?) with that bizarre lemon twist and a maggot-riddled olive thrown in for good measure. The nature of magic feels different, but can't quite put my finger on it...

14) I can imagine reading this book again. But not a sequel...?

15) Favourite interactions: Stephen and the gentleman. Thistledown keeps giving Stephen gifts and Stephen is just bled out by contact with the fey psycho. Stephen heroically tries to keep the fairy pitbull on some kind of leash. I kept thinking of Stalin's wife.

16) Favourite movement: the leadup to Arabella's disappearance

17) Favourite scene: Strange talking to Arabella at the end (one reason for not wanting a sequel). I like Arabella. Walk back into the darkness Jonathan.

18) Favourite line: Stephen 'did not understand why or how, but he would catch himself thinking, "Yes, just beyond that corner is the Eastern Armoury." Or, "Those stairs lead to the Disemboweller's Tower."'

19) Favourite conceit: Norrell's obsession for restoring 'English magic'. It is his nobility. It is his one claim to goodness. It is real in him.

20) Footnotes wonderful and self-indulgent but they also 'spoof' you into the universe of the book.

21) It took me a month to read. Very unusual for me. I'm a quick study but not here.