John Crowley's Little, Big & Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
This is a slightly different entry from me: a joint review. Partly this is because I am very much behind in my review-writing, but mostly it is because despite their many differences, and despite the very different technical skill the authors possess, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell gets right the very thing that made Little, Big ultimately fail for me. Because of the length (and because I couldn't get the cut to work properly), I have omitted my usual book information and jacket descriptions.
My Review
I must start by saying these are both excellent books, worthy of the awards they have won. Crowley's is the more polished work, each sentence a brightly polished gem, exactly as sensual and wise as its jacket proclaims. I found myself frequently pausing in delight over the imagery, and while assertions that it is "overdecorated" certainly can't be refuted, in Crowley's hands that is no bad thing. Clarke, on the other hand, was only middlingly successful in her central conceit -- I felt at times that the faux-Victorian novelistic style broke down, mainly through the author's (or perhaps the publisher's) lack of committment to it. The story slipped in and out of that mood, particularly when describing the more magical elements -- the faery realm, and the spells the magicians cast. Some of the footnotes also seemed wholly unnecessary; while I loved the long digressive footnotes, the ones that simply cited a made-up book with no additional information added nothing to the story; I understood they were part of the central conceit, but they broke the flow of the narrative and added nothing in exchange.
They are also not quite as dissimilar as I thought on first glance. Both are about a return of magic to a magic-less land; both take great long digressions that end up contributing nothing to the overall plot; both involve fate in a way that I am not entirely pleased by. (More on this later.) Both have endings in which quite a few questions are left unanswered. In this aspect, I give Clarke the edge over Crowley -- in Crowley's work, the questions left unanswered are the big questions, the ones we readers have been grappling with the entire novel, and this makes his ending dissatisfying; in Clarke's work, while some of the questions unanswered are ones that run throughout the novel, most of the questions raised are answered, and definitely the outcomes for all the characters have been resolved (at least to a certain extent). Both of the novels also felt over-long (especially in contrast to some of the pre-Tolkein fantasy I've been reading lately), and neither one gripped me to the extent that I couldn't put the book down to watch television or cook dinner in the middle of a chapter. (In their defense, this is partly because both books rely on creating an atmosphere, so there are long stretches where very little plot is happening.)
Both authors also do that which I prize above all else in novels: they create wonderfully well-realized, three-dimensional characters, not only for their leads, but for every character that gets even the briefest bit of viewpoint text. Crowley's are more nuanced and more idiosyncratic, while Clarke's are played rather broadly and for more comic effect, but every character whose head I got placed into was full of complex motivations that sometimes conflicted, and most also went through enough adversity (even if it be the most minor sort) that they were forced to grow and change over the course of the novel. This is true even of the villains, though both authors (I think in their attempt to keep their villains villainy instead of sympathetic) could have done more to make their villains major motivations clear during pivotal moments.
But this is where Clarke's novel succeeded for me while Crowley's failed: in Clarke's novel, despite the fact that in the end every character was merely acting in accordance with prophecy, every character's actions brought that prophecy about. It was because of Mr. Norrell's and Jonathan Strange's characters that the prophecy was able to come about. As Childermass says near the end, "Norrell is a clever man -- and Strange another. They have their faults, as other men do, but their achievements are still remarkable. Make no mistake; I am John Uskglass's man. Or would be, if he were here. But you must admit that the restoration of English magic is their work, not his." At every step in the book, it is the nature of the characters involved that bring that action about -- and that kept me riveted through the last hundred pages, rooting for the characters I liked and fearing that their weaknesses would betray them in the end.
I had no such rooting interest in Little, Big. The difference, perhaps, lies in the fact that the characters in Crowley's novel know their actions have been preordained, while the characters in Clarke's novel brushed the prophecy aside; but whatever the cause, while Clarke's characters were active creators of their fate, Crowley's were never more than passive recipients of theirs. A couple attempted to break away, to deny that they were mere pawns in larger affairs than they were aware of, but not only were these attempts futile; they were transitory -- each character ultimately let him/herself get swept up, gave up his/her agency wholly to barely perceptible forces who weren't even clearly on the side of good. This had the peculiar effect of making these fabulously idiosyncratic, complex characters that Crowley created seem shadowy and insubstantial, and made their mostly happy ending feel undeserved.
There were other, smaller reasons I preferred Clarke's novel as well. Despite the fact that Clarke's takes place mostly among white British aristocracy and Crowley's is both more middle class and more multicultural, it is Crowley's characters who feel entirely privileged (with all the negativity that can imply) to me; Clarke's characters work for their livings (and work hard) and she does the wonderful thing of making a pivotal character a black butler whose mother was a slave of his current employer's family, and while I can't say she did a great job of portraying the sort of emotional conflicts this would have created, she doesn't shy away from them either. Crowley's characters, on the other hand, just waft through their existences living off their various inheritances, and the Puerto Rican element seemed chosen and applied utterly at random -- it didn't feel organic to the story to me. Additionally, Crowley set up and maintained (perhaps without even realizing it) a gender dichotomy that I absolutely hated, wherein all the female characters were tied closely to the magic and completely ineffective in the real world while all the men had to work at believing in the magic (or had to pretend to believe in it, to please the womenfolk) and thus took care of all the real-world issues that filled the book until the very end. Clarke's women, though bound by all the strictures 19th-century England placed on women, were very much the masters of their own minds and worked (with varying success) within the world around them to shape it to their needs. There was a slight misstep for me when near the end Sir Walter Pole began spouting vaguely feminist rhetoric, and certainly none of the women is at all the focus of the novel, but none of the gender issues made me queasy the way Crowley's did.
Ultimately, both of these are novels I would not hesitate to recommend, but I simply enjoyed Clarke's more, on almost every level, and Crowley's greater skill with words did nothing but make me wish I could have liked his novel more.
My Review
I must start by saying these are both excellent books, worthy of the awards they have won. Crowley's is the more polished work, each sentence a brightly polished gem, exactly as sensual and wise as its jacket proclaims. I found myself frequently pausing in delight over the imagery, and while assertions that it is "overdecorated" certainly can't be refuted, in Crowley's hands that is no bad thing. Clarke, on the other hand, was only middlingly successful in her central conceit -- I felt at times that the faux-Victorian novelistic style broke down, mainly through the author's (or perhaps the publisher's) lack of committment to it. The story slipped in and out of that mood, particularly when describing the more magical elements -- the faery realm, and the spells the magicians cast. Some of the footnotes also seemed wholly unnecessary; while I loved the long digressive footnotes, the ones that simply cited a made-up book with no additional information added nothing to the story; I understood they were part of the central conceit, but they broke the flow of the narrative and added nothing in exchange.
They are also not quite as dissimilar as I thought on first glance. Both are about a return of magic to a magic-less land; both take great long digressions that end up contributing nothing to the overall plot; both involve fate in a way that I am not entirely pleased by. (More on this later.) Both have endings in which quite a few questions are left unanswered. In this aspect, I give Clarke the edge over Crowley -- in Crowley's work, the questions left unanswered are the big questions, the ones we readers have been grappling with the entire novel, and this makes his ending dissatisfying; in Clarke's work, while some of the questions unanswered are ones that run throughout the novel, most of the questions raised are answered, and definitely the outcomes for all the characters have been resolved (at least to a certain extent). Both of the novels also felt over-long (especially in contrast to some of the pre-Tolkein fantasy I've been reading lately), and neither one gripped me to the extent that I couldn't put the book down to watch television or cook dinner in the middle of a chapter. (In their defense, this is partly because both books rely on creating an atmosphere, so there are long stretches where very little plot is happening.)
Both authors also do that which I prize above all else in novels: they create wonderfully well-realized, three-dimensional characters, not only for their leads, but for every character that gets even the briefest bit of viewpoint text. Crowley's are more nuanced and more idiosyncratic, while Clarke's are played rather broadly and for more comic effect, but every character whose head I got placed into was full of complex motivations that sometimes conflicted, and most also went through enough adversity (even if it be the most minor sort) that they were forced to grow and change over the course of the novel. This is true even of the villains, though both authors (I think in their attempt to keep their villains villainy instead of sympathetic) could have done more to make their villains major motivations clear during pivotal moments.
But this is where Clarke's novel succeeded for me while Crowley's failed: in Clarke's novel, despite the fact that in the end every character was merely acting in accordance with prophecy, every character's actions brought that prophecy about. It was because of Mr. Norrell's and Jonathan Strange's characters that the prophecy was able to come about. As Childermass says near the end, "Norrell is a clever man -- and Strange another. They have their faults, as other men do, but their achievements are still remarkable. Make no mistake; I am John Uskglass's man. Or would be, if he were here. But you must admit that the restoration of English magic is their work, not his." At every step in the book, it is the nature of the characters involved that bring that action about -- and that kept me riveted through the last hundred pages, rooting for the characters I liked and fearing that their weaknesses would betray them in the end.
I had no such rooting interest in Little, Big. The difference, perhaps, lies in the fact that the characters in Crowley's novel know their actions have been preordained, while the characters in Clarke's novel brushed the prophecy aside; but whatever the cause, while Clarke's characters were active creators of their fate, Crowley's were never more than passive recipients of theirs. A couple attempted to break away, to deny that they were mere pawns in larger affairs than they were aware of, but not only were these attempts futile; they were transitory -- each character ultimately let him/herself get swept up, gave up his/her agency wholly to barely perceptible forces who weren't even clearly on the side of good. This had the peculiar effect of making these fabulously idiosyncratic, complex characters that Crowley created seem shadowy and insubstantial, and made their mostly happy ending feel undeserved.
There were other, smaller reasons I preferred Clarke's novel as well. Despite the fact that Clarke's takes place mostly among white British aristocracy and Crowley's is both more middle class and more multicultural, it is Crowley's characters who feel entirely privileged (with all the negativity that can imply) to me; Clarke's characters work for their livings (and work hard) and she does the wonderful thing of making a pivotal character a black butler whose mother was a slave of his current employer's family, and while I can't say she did a great job of portraying the sort of emotional conflicts this would have created, she doesn't shy away from them either. Crowley's characters, on the other hand, just waft through their existences living off their various inheritances, and the Puerto Rican element seemed chosen and applied utterly at random -- it didn't feel organic to the story to me. Additionally, Crowley set up and maintained (perhaps without even realizing it) a gender dichotomy that I absolutely hated, wherein all the female characters were tied closely to the magic and completely ineffective in the real world while all the men had to work at believing in the magic (or had to pretend to believe in it, to please the womenfolk) and thus took care of all the real-world issues that filled the book until the very end. Clarke's women, though bound by all the strictures 19th-century England placed on women, were very much the masters of their own minds and worked (with varying success) within the world around them to shape it to their needs. There was a slight misstep for me when near the end Sir Walter Pole began spouting vaguely feminist rhetoric, and certainly none of the women is at all the focus of the novel, but none of the gender issues made me queasy the way Crowley's did.
Ultimately, both of these are novels I would not hesitate to recommend, but I simply enjoyed Clarke's more, on almost every level, and Crowley's greater skill with words did nothing but make me wish I could have liked his novel more.