![]() ![]() ![]() Jonathan Strange affects the course of the Napoleonic wars, and has the luck to meet and perhaps inspire Lord Byron, Shelley and Mary Shelley, but he loses his wife to the faerie realm. Norrell's side, only to set himself up in trade as competition. Soon the young Jonathan Strange - talented, handsome and impetuous - arranges to study at Mr. Norrell makes his reputation by publicly bringing the dead young fiancée of a cabinet minister back to life. He intends singlehandedly to rehabilitate the reputation of English magic, a subject long deemed more suitable for academic scrutiny than for practical application. The plot - do you have an hour or two? - can be summarized thus: a Yorkshire magician named Gilbert Norrell arrives in London in 1806. Clarke's novel, I'm pleased to say, just about deserves the fuss. An imaginative (and aggressive) marketing campaign aims to deliver her book, as if by magic, to the top of the best-seller list. Nonetheless, she has reaped the benefits of the marketplace with a big advance from Bloomsbury, Rowling's own British publisher. Norrell," her massive novel of magic and magicians, before the recent re-emergence of literary fantasy as a popular commodity. Susanna Clarke, it has been reported, began writing "Jonathan Strange & Mr. R.) came out with the first Harry Potter novel. ![]() The publishing world has been under a weird enchantment since She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named (but her initials are J. "There is a great deal of magic in books nowadays," Mr. ![]()
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