Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Why we chose this book
It's easy to see why this novel is our most popular gift basket! It is so rich with detail you'll actually shiver as the mysterious wind first blows through a damp stone cathedral. There is truly something for everyone in this wonderful best-selling novel.  ~Beth

From the Publisher
English magicians were once the wonder of the known world. But by the early 1800s they have long since lost the ability to perform magic. The rich, reclusive Mr Norrell has assembled a wonderful library of lost and forgotten books from England's magical past and regained some of the powers of England's magicians. All goes well until a rival magician appears. Jonathan Strange is handsome, charming, and talkative-the very opposite of Mr Norrell. Eventually Strange's heedless pursuit of long-forgotten magic threatens to destroy not only his partnership with Norrell, but everything that he holds dear.  

Amazon.com Editorial Review

It's 1808 and that Corsican upstart Napoleon is battering the English army and navy. Enter Mr. Norrell, a fusty but ambitious scholar from the Yorkshire countryside and the first practical magician in hundreds of years. What better way to demonstrate his revival of British magic than to change the course of the Napoleonic wars? 

Susanna Clarke's ingenious first novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, has the cleverness and lightness of touch of the Harry Potter series, but is less a fairy tale of good versus evil than a fantastic comedy of manners, complete with elaborate false footnotes, occasional period spellings, and a dense, lively mythology teeming beneath the narrative. 

A sparkling debut from Susanna Clarke--and it's not all fairy dust. 

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