Quote:
Originally Posted by LovesMacs
Have you ever read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke? I have been meaning to read this book for years--I even have an autographed copy--but I keep putting it off in part to the copious footnotes. It's a thick book, and some pages are almost entirely footnotes. Footnotes, mind you, not endnotes, so they can't be easily ignored. I like editions of classic books with footnotes that I can consult if needed, but in this case, I am given to understand that the footnotes are very important to following the plot.
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Yes. I've read it. I admit that footnotes have never put me off; for years, when I was doing litigation, I was a research freak, so for whatever reason, footnotes seem perfectly normal to me.
I mostly enjoyed
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, but it's very odd. I read it some years back (wow, thinking about it...quite a few years back, now), and it's....well, it's a comedy of manners, missing the more obvious comedy elements. If you're familiar and comfortable with writers of the Dickensian age/style, you'll get the comedic elements; if not, it mayn't work for you. It's a book that is not easy to categorize.
The historical fiction part was well-researched. I just felt that in places, there was a disconnect with the readers, or more likely, it's that (for me) so many plot elements were left hanging, as if a "volume II" were in the offing that, to the best of my knowledge, never appeared. It's NOT "Harry Potter" for grown-ups, nor LOTR. Neil Gaiman liked it immensely, which is what moved me to pick it up, but...I'd have to know the prospective reader better to be able to recommend it or not. It most certainly isn't a fast-moving "page-turner" in that modern sense of the word. No big cliff-hanger endings, etc.
I will say, without a doubt, this was a book written by an author who wrote for her own delight, without a real nod toward the mass market. That's always interesting to me, so I'm definitely glad I read it. I remember that I liked it well enough to gift one to a close friend of mine--so I must have liked it at the time quite a bit better than I recollect now. :-)
Hitch