[Aeneas]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

Whoops, didn't realize my turn was coming up.

In the category of Fantasy, Bartleby and the Scriveners is pleased to select Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke.


I read this book while recovering from pneumonia in Invermere... so that may colour my perception of it a little! But I remember is as a compendious and deeply absorbing tale of a rivalry between two magicians in an alternate 19th-century England, filled with faeries, magic, spells, politics and intrigue. It's baroque form is just the tip of what is fascinating about this book, which takes place against a profoundly rich backdrop of an alternate "England" more multifarious and fascinating than the real one could ever be--and while it may not rise to the level of high pastiche like Tristram Shandy, it's in that vein in the sense of being a novel that turns its eye to the serious and mundane as well as to the fantastic, and beyond that is a novel that is highly interested in its own form, in the nature of narrative, in Englishness, in fantasy, in utopia and in the political problems of today.

In short: great book. You should read it.

Seconded. Really enjoyed his one.