Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke

This was a reread for me, so I knew exactly what I was in for — a long book, with digressions and ramblings. A book that echoes, pastiches, draws on the tradition of an older sort of novel, establishing a narrative of literature and scholarship around itself with its footnotes and references. A book of magic, and fallible people, and old enchantment. It’s a novel other people have found badly paced, slow, boring, full of unlikeable characters, unbearable, etc.

Obviously, because this was a reread, I didn’t find the pacing terrible or the characters so unlikeable as to ruin it; in fact, now I’ve finished it, I could almost be tempted to begin again right now. I love this book even more than I did the first time I read it. Clarke creates a wonderfully rich world, full of people who act like people — self-interested; lazy; careless; fearful; brave; heroic; clever… It strikes me that it’s easier to list dozens of ways you can be less than ideal than it is to come up with dozens of ways to be ideal, so perhaps there’s some truth in saying that this book is heavy on the less-than-ideal characters. Which is fine, by my lights, because so is life. If you spend time in the world, you see all the major characters doing things both good and bad, making sins of commission and omission, quarrelling and loving.

I find it an incredibly rich world, and I was sorry to be finished. I want to know what Strange and Norrell study, what Childermass does, whether Arabella ever sees Strange again, what the new King is like… I love the way it uses some of our legends and stories about magic and fairies, but adds to them and draws them together. I loved that it was a really solid read, something I could lose myself in. I love reading all the time, but I especially love it when a book opens a new world to me instead of just letting me observe that world, and that’s how I feel about Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. I could feel while reading as though if I turned and looked at a mirror, it might be a door leading to who-knows-where — and while under Clarke’s spell, I’d take that door in a heartbeat.

Rating: 5/5

The Hawley Book of the Dead, Chrysler Szarlan
Received to review via Netgalley

This sounded great when I originally requested it; I’d forgotten most of that by the time I picked it up, but I was still interested. The set-up is great: the creepy/historic house and village, the magic in the family, the magic tricks on the stage, the mysterious Fetch coming after the family. The setting is great; I could easily picture both the theatre for the performance at the beginning of the story, and the little abandoned town in New England.

But. The family. There were details that seemed meant to be vivid — the black/white clothes of the twins, the red hair, the string Caleigh uses… it felt flat to me, and so did the described emotion. If the numbness after a loss was what I was meant to feel vicariously, then that would have worked, but there was also fear, a desire for vengeance, anger, and those didn’t come across to me.

Perhaps worst of all, this reminded me too much of Joanne Harris’ Chocolat (the woman fleeing bad magic with her children, the magic running in the family), The Night Circus (the magic, but here without the enchantment), and something else I can’t quite put my finger on. It didn’t feel “rich”, as the blurb on Goodreads had it. I can’t say it was terrible, but it was just so… flat.

Rating: 2/5

Roadside Picnic, Boris & Arkady Strugatsky

I suggested this book for the Cardiff SF/F bookclub.

Reading this again after finishing Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance), the debt is obvious. If VanderMeer hasn’t read Roadside Picnic, there’s a whole bunch of similarities: the central idea, that maybe humans and aliens won’t/can’t understand each other, the mysterious and unknowable purpose behind the alien presence, the transformations of people in and around the Zone, even the revenant people who come back (in the Southern Reach trilogy, as doubles which mysteriously and quickly die; here, as actual corpses).The introduction by Ursula Le Guin mentions other stories which tackle similar themes re: human/alien interaction, which I’m going to have to check out.

As a bit of classic SF, this stands up pretty well, although of course it has its problems too. The only women with speaking lines are Guta and Dina, and both are objects of desire, motivators for the men. Monkey, Red’s daughter, barely even gets chance to speak, and she isn’t really treated as human. But I still find the set-up compelling, and even though none of the characters are really awesome people or fleshed out, they’re human, with the usual mix of good and bad aspects. Enough that they feel more or less real, though there’s a definite Russian flavour to it — one I can’t quite put my finger on, a sort of absurdity through precise descriptions of movements, actions, dialogue.

The ending… is inconclusive. It’s like they got to the culmination of the idea and character, and didn’t want to show the aftermath — maybe didn’t even know what it would be. That’s for us to wonder.

Rating: 4/5