I got this book for some Christmas or another from my parents. I usually end up with a book haul, because books are cheaper than video games. I didn't read it for a long time because I kept being preoccupied reading other things and with my actual life. In fact, so much time passed between getting it and reading it that I thought it was a very different book than it was. I had created its story in my head, and then was confused when it wasn't it at all.
But that's neither here nor there.
I actually started reading this a couple of times. I just didn't seem able to absorb the first chapter, mostly because a lot happened in a single chapter. I'm not super used to that. But what're you going to do? It took me a while to really get into it, and I fell out of touch with it several times, and not just because I had to look up a word.
This book is hard. I said that at the start. But it's a very high reading level, is what I mean. That isn't to say that you have to reread a sentence in order to figure out what it's saying, but it can be very time-consuming. I'm not really sure what I'm trying to say. It was difficult for me because if I missed a single word, I felt like I was going to miss something, which was an honest concern. For instance, there is a recited prophecy in Chapter 13 that, after finishing the book, I flipped back to and was surprised that it told the entirety of the climax. Vague, of course, and incomprehensible until you went through the events at the end of the novel, but a well-executed use of prophecy nonetheless.
I put the novel down several times because the language was hard, the novel was long, and the plot didn't seem to be going anywhere. None of these things make it a bad book. The language being hard actually lent an air to all of the events that a generally modern way of writing would not have been able to convey. The novel was long, but in retrospect, I realize that every chapter served a specific purpose in the story and no piece could have been removed. The only problem is the pacing, in my opinion.
The beginning section introduces you to Mr. Norrell, and then goes out of its way to color him as a horrible little old man. He performs an influential act of magic that introduces the book's main antagonist, but then that antagonist is just bugging a small circle of people for most of the rest of the book. Jonathan Strange is introduced and quickly shipped off to show how magic was used in the Napoleonic Wars. When he comes back, the antagonist sets his sights on Mrs. Strange, and that's when the book finally makes the bad guy seem like a bad guy. But not before some magical dickery from Norrell on the publication of Strange's book.
The vast majority of the book is used to describe the relationship between Norrell and Strange, when I would have appreciated more about the gentleman.
There was a distinctive chapter that led me to put the book down for a week: Chapter 52. It talks rather randomly about a mad old woman with fifty cats living in the Jewish ghetto of Venice. I obviously understand now why the chapter was there, but it seemed like such a random story in the novel at the time that I couldn't bring myself to sit down and continue. If it had had any hooks in previous chapters, I may have been okay with it and continued to read the book without taking a break.
The ending is the best part. I literally sat on the couch and read the last ten chapters enraptured. It was those last ten chapters that made me think (especially with the descriptions of Strange's mad visions) that made me want this book to be made into a movie. While reading it, I didn't understand all the reviews at the front that said that the book, my copy over a thousand pages long, felt too short. That ending was great. It felt like a cut scene in a video game, an epic showdown in a movie. It was awesome. But I wonder if it was the tromping through the rest of the book that allowed for the ending to be so good? Like, if I hadn't felt so frustrated and exhausted through the book, would I have been as engaged in the ending?
I am not denying that this book had a lot to say, the least of which had to do with magic. But the act of reading it is not like a dessert. It isn't sweet and delicious and something to look forward too. It's more like vegetables. (This is where the metaphor falls apart; I regularly prefer vegetables to dessert, but I'm an outlier.) You may or may not enjoy it at the time, but the health effects, the thinking it inspires in you afterwards, makes it seem worth it.
6.5/10
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