Finished "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell" last night. Comments will come later in this post, with a warning about spoilers. (SOP: if you've not read it yet and plan to, you may wish to skip the sixth full paragraph of this post).

Somewhat of a comment roundup, first, though:

Lynn - with the old t-shirts, you are aware that you can make quilts out of the front of old t-shirts that are too worn to wear but that have memories? I've got a bunch of conference t-shirts (going back to '93 or so) that I keep thinking maybe would be better turned into a quilt, since I rarely wear them (I have about 5-6 t-shirts I wear all the time, and most of them are plain solid-color because that seems "dressier" to me.)

On the names thing: dragonknitter, by "plantations" do you mean when Scots folk were brought in to "manage" the lands in Ireland (mostly by the British, who still had kind of a feudal system set up there)? I'm reading about that in the book about the Crimean War that I'm reading (They spend some time talking about Lord Lucan's holdings in Ireland by way of showing how ruthless but organized he was).

And Karin - lots of times when folk came here (you probably know this), they'd come into Ellis Island with some long ethnic name, and the folks at Ellis Island would be like, "Okay....your name is now 'Jones.'" Or something like that. Or people changed names on their own, to make them easier to spell or more "palatable" (I know of families that changed their German names in the 40s....).

Or for other reasons. Somewhere back in the history of one of my mom's brothers-in-law was a Nelson who was really a Jensen but he was basically indentured on a Norwegian ship, and he jumped ship at some U.S. port and changed his name so they couldn't find him and drag him back....(Most families have those kind of funky stories in them - I love those. I also - on the German side of my family - have someone who emigrated to dodge being drafted into the Kaiser's army, and on the Irish side, people who sympathized with and probably provided a safe house to rebels during an early version of the "Troubles.")


Okay.

Here there be Spoilers. (and to the end of the post. So if you don't want spoilers, you can stop reading this post now).











One thing I have to say - I like it when an author DOESN'T wrap everything up in a neat package - when there's the sense that the characters in the book more or less go on living their lives, working at their struggles, after the book closes. (Even as a child I thought "lived happily ever after" was a terrible cop-out).

So I like the way Clarke ended the book....you never know if Strange and Norrell dispelled the darkness, if they broke the various spells, and if Strange and Arabella were reunited. (I would like to believe that they were, though probably not until much later in life.) And you also wonder what happens to English magic - does it go on being done, or do people decide that it's too risky, or, like alchemy, does it fall out of favor and get replaced by something more technical? Maybe the Industrial Revolution, in Susanna-Clarke-world, killed English Magic?

Also, yay Stephen Black! In many respects, he's the real hero of the piece - he got caught up in something through no fault of his own, he wound up in situations where he KNEW evil was working, and he did what he could - knowing, of course, that it would alter and very possibly end his life - to get rid of that evil, in order to save Mrs. Strange and Lady Poole.

And it's sort of a tantalizing picture we see of him at last - the newly-installed King, and the comment to the effect that many of the sins of the past had been undone. Makes you think maybe a new golden age was starting.

(I also like how the prophecies were different from how most people interpreted them. I find that often to be true - oh, I don't mean that there's all this prophecy flying around in the world today, but often times people's early assessment of a situation is wrong, but the working-out of the situation actually seems (after the fact) to fit with what you were seeing before).

The idea of the "book" that is written on Vinculus' skin (which I originally interpreted as he had had it tattooed on him, but apparently it was something that showed up of its own accord) changing when the world changed is sort of creepy and wonderful. I'm still thinking about that and what it means.

I STILL can't shake the feeling that the story and the things that happen in it have some correspondence with human attitudes and things in the 'real' world - the world where magic is basically conjuring tricks and such - but I can't quite see where the correspondence fits in. Philosophy? Religion? Technology?

(I have to say - the very particular action of Norrell and Strange "quartering" the surface of the water in a bowl, and then tapping one quarter to "focus" it in more reminds me a lot of using a cursor on a computer).


Very enjoyable book. I've also got her book of short stories ("The Ladies of Grace Adieu") to read sometime.