Dark Tryst with Lord Byron

With its faux-19th century literary style including the use of words like “chuse” and “shew”, and the copious use of footnotes, Clarke succeeds in making her work read like a chronicle of the history of magic in England.

On to the story, then. It is 1807, and the curmudgeonly Mr Norrell is destined to bring magic back to the shores of England. For a period, the path trodden by the rather boring old magician is a solitary one, until the younger, more likeable, happy-go-lucky Jonathan Strange comes into the picture. The self taught Strange gathers more and more knowledge from Norrell, even as the latter wavers between hoarding his knowledge and sharing it with his able pupil. Then there are the actual crossovers with history, as the duo — mainly Strange — help the British effort to contain and combat Napoleon. Even Lord Byron makes a somewhat gratuitous cameo appearance.

One cannot help admiring Clarke’s sheer ambitiousness and audacity as she looks to combine history, myth, magic and good old-fashioned storytelling for close to 800 pages. The outcome, however, is not always spectacular.

And yet, an immense amount of cleverness, wit and craft shine through the densely populated pages. Although Clarke is not squeamish in building up a body count (unlike Rowling, who had to wait till HP4 for a reasonably important corpse) there are occasional luminous bits of compassion in her prose. For example: “Can a magician kill a man by magic?” Lord Wellington asked Strange. Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. “I suppose a magician might,” he admitted, “but a gentleman never could.”

Such passages are what make Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell almost magical in parts. As for the rest, one can always pick and chuse.