Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Like a turtle...
Maybe it's just me, but good gravy has J.S. & Mr. N been a slow read. I'm not quite finished, but I feel like I've been reading this novel forever. I'm not sure why either. The plot points are interesting and the world is so incredibly involved. Nevertheless, I feel I only started reading at my average rate after Mr. Strange's loss, which is two-thirds through the narrative. Jeez! Well, I feel better after sharing that. Otherwise, I'd like to note my appreciation for how Clarke hasn't aggrandized the wizards or made them anywhere near perfect. Their human qualities make them a bit more entertaining than your typical all-knowing, wise man type wizard. (No offense to my homie Gandalf, of course). Even those characters which seem more in the know than others, such as Childermass or the Lord of Lost-Hope, have their flaws. I'm also enjoying the mini-battle between intuitive, natural magic and book-learned, rationalized magic. I feel there are lots of parallels being made between the magical movement in the narrative and the Enlightenment vs. Romanticism movement that occurred in the "real world". That said, I can tell I'm missing a lot of the historical significance or relations in the plot, especially in regards to the war. I would probably get more out of it if I knew anything about the Napoleonic wars. Oh well. At this point in time, I suppose all I can say is, "If Jonathan doesn't realize there's a frikkin fairy plotting around him within the next fifty pages this book is going out the window!!!"
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3 comments:
As usual, Jessie, I have to agree with your insightful (and timely!) comment. For me personally, the novel didn't really pick up until after Strange's tragedy (which, as I'm sure we ALL know, takes quite a while to occur). Prior to this, I only ingenuously enjoyed the sections that focussed on Childermass, Stephen and John Segundus. Maybe it's because these characters always seem to progress in their respective chapters while Norrell and Strange simply skip through lots of plot points without any real advancement. It just seems like a whole lot of setup for a little bit of pay-off. I'm not saying I'm not enjoying it (I'm about two hundred pages from the end) but I do feel that the main mass of this book has been filler.
The style that Susanna Clark uses to tell her story makes this book worthwhile even if I'm finding the plot a bit lacking at the moment. I absolutely adore all the haughty social Victorian works. This facsimile reads almost like George Eliot's MIDDLEMARCH, and with the same strengths and deficiencies. It's light and crisp, like a biscuit at a tea party! Polite chatter at a sophisticated soiree! And now that I'm actually hooked on the events happening, I'm going to go try to complete this monostrous text.
AAAggghh!! it does take forever to get interesting. I finally got into it on some page close to 200, and im barely halfway with the whole thing. So, i dont know what mr.strange's failure is... im sure i'll find out later. In my opinion, Clark is a pretty good writer, but does anybody else agree with me when i say she could have cut down on some massive elaboration and still have the same thing in much less text? some of the stuff is just not necessary.
Holy mess. YES.
This book is driving me up a wall. I'm not quite done (my reason for absence on the blog... I hate spoilers!), but MAN. The book doesn't pick up for me until page 300ish, and I'm still struggling through the 700s...
Jeebus.
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