Month: January 2014

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (Susannah Clarke) is one of those books I’d been meaning to read for some time and I finally picked it up last year. Perhaps fittingly I have also taken my time in finally committing to a review. Unlike the novel, I will be brief (this is is no way a criticism of the book, its length is perfectly suited to the tale it tells).

This is a dense yet whimsical novel, one that is amazingly polished for being the author’s first. Clarke vividly depicts an alternate Victorian era where magic exists but has fallen into disuse, something that the titular characters first separately then jointly work to change, with unexpected results for both.

Strange and Norrell are each in their own ways difficult men who do not always get along with others, with Norrell being a near-misanthrope. The married Strange is more accommodating to others and bolder, putting aside Norrell’s studied approach to reviving magic in favor of grand displays of magic done on behalf of England in its wars against the French. The conflict between the men forms one of the main pillars of the story, with another being the abduction of several people by a malevolent fairy. Clarke does a terrific job in bringing the various events together, employing archaic language that gives the feel of being a history recorded by someone who lived in the time.

Each chapter includes footnotes that are often pages long and that Clarke apparently expected these to be rejected by the publisher. Their addition adds a quirky scholarly feel that further contributes to the book’s presentation as historical artifact. At the same time, the author occasional intrudes to offer a pointed opinion about one character or another. It’s something that could come across as twee but Clarke handles it confidently.

I have not read many alternate history novels (actually, I don’t if I have read any) but this still strikes me as being an excellent example of the genre. Recommended.

I try to read a few classics or pseudo-classics every year and the first one I tackled for 2014 is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland because all of Lewis Carroll’s work is in the public domain, which means it is free, baby, free. And the ebook edition I read is based on the original 1865 edition that includes John Tenniel’s wonderful illustrations.

Here’s one of them, courtesy of the Wikipedia article. I love these. Yes, enough to marry them.

Having never read either of the Alice books and getting the ebook edition, which weights exactly zero of anything, I had no idea the story was so short and finished it in a day. As befits the literary nonsense genre it belongs to, the story is filled with absurd imagery, copious amounts of word play and puns a-plenty. My biggest surprise was probably how daft Alice is, often having long and odd conversations with herself and obsessing over her size, among other things.

This was a pleasant read but one that did not leave me necessarily hungering for more.

This Book is Full of Spiders is David Wong’s pseudo-sequel to John Dies at the End. Unlike the latter book, Spiders has a much tighter narrative and is darker overall, though the irreverence, drunkenness and general ineptitude of the main characters carry over from the first volume.

The title is also accurate. Arachnophobes will be left squirming uncomfortably at the giant piles of spiders that lead to a kind of zombie apocalypse in Wong’s hometown of [Undisclosed].

What I like most is the way Wong balances the disparate elements and makes them all work. The protagonist is flippant, his best friend ridiculous, yet you are made to care about them. There are scenes that are both horrifying and moving. There are photos of John’s penis. Repeatedly.

Wong writes dialogue that is both direct and believable, even when (or especially when) people are discussing things that are outrageous or terrible. The only lapses are minor ones–he relies a bit too much on happenstance and coincidence to move the story along at certain points, but never to the point where it seriously detracts. Likewise, the conceit of never naming the town–in order to keep people from going there and having bad things happen to them because the place is so screwed up–falls apart after he describes the town being a headline all over the world after it is placed under quarantine. That and a video shot there gets 18 million hits on YouTube. Not so much [Undisclosed] anymore.

Overall, though, This Book is Full of Spiders builds nicely on the groundwork laid in John Dies at the End and is–dare I say it–a more mature book. Plus, how can you resist a story where the author describes his hair as looking combed by an angry cat?