Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2020, Bloomsbury Publishing USA)
864 pages
English language
Published April 26, 2020 by Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
Published in 2004, it is an alternative history set in 19th-century England around the time of the Napoleonic Wars. Its premise is that magic once existed in England and has returned with two men: Gilbert Norrell and Jonathan Strange. Centred on the relationship between these two men, the novel investigates the nature of "Englishness" and the boundaries between reason and unreason, Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Dane, and Northern and Southern English cultural tropes/stereotypes. It has been described as a fantasy novel, an alternative history, and a historical novel. It inverts the Industrial Revolution conception of the North-South divide in England: in this book the North is romantic and magical, rather than rational and concrete.
If you like the first page, you'll love the whole book. Undeniably a new cozy "comfort read" for me, with a permanent place on my bookshelf.
As a slow reader I felt like my nightly visits over several months were whisking me off to some mystical land.
