Lei: Strange and Norrell

150 Minutes-of-Commute: The Prelude - Jay Z
As you see I can't leave so I do love you
But I'm just a hustler disguised as a rapper
In fact you can't fit this hustle inside of a wrapper

Last night I dreamt that Boy and I were the greatest magicians in all of England.

It took me 3 months to finish Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke , but it was worth it. The book was 1000+ pages, and I'll admit there are certainly places where the story is slow. (Norrell is a drag through most of the story; Strange, however, is wonderfully exciting to follow!) Nevertheless, the book is a fascinating piece of work.

Let's get the geeky stuff out of the way: I love stories of magic and the supernatural. That said, I don't think this book is accessible as Harry Potter, but I will say that this book, about two men in the late 1800s who revive the lost art of English Magic, creates a more believable world where magic exists than does the Harry Potter series.

One of her tricks is blurring the line between the world in the novel and the world outside the novel, a trick she accomplishes in two ways. The first is by posting reviews on the novel but the protagonists themselves; the second way is by filling the book with footnotes, as it if were a true historical account. The footnotes range from relevant stories alluded to but not told within the narrative, to the names and authors of "published" papers and books. I think the footnotes are sheer brilliance. I can only compare Clarke world of magic to Anne Rice's world of the supernatural in that despite the fact that both authors wrote about a subject matter that has been explored for hundreds of years, they both manage to carve out a world complete with laws that is so commanding and so convincing that were I ever actually forced to choose how to kill a Vampire or summon a faery, I certainly would turn to these texts first.

Last, let me say I ripped through the last 200 pages in only a few hours. I am satisfied with the end, but would be the first to read a sequel should it come out. Let's just hope it doesn't take Clarke another 10 years to produce the next one.