This first novel by Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, is an intriguing exploration of the alternate history of magic’s restoration to England during the war against Napoleon. Mr.. Norrell, an unlikeable old man who dares to make the jump from theoretical magic to practical magic(!), struggles to keep magic in England completely under his control but is forced by circumstance to take on Jonathan Strange as a student. Strange’s attitude toward magic is much more open and welcoming, eager to make magic available to the English public. Lurking in the background is a malignant fairy king, to whom Norrell owes a terrible debt. There a several storylines going on in the novel that weave together and overlap while each maintaining its own integrity as a subsidiary tale. When Clarke brings them all together at the novel’s climax, the effect is stunning.

A lengthy but delightful romp through the possible alternative history of the United Kingdom, I urge everyone interested in bringing magic back into the modern world to read the record of Strange and Norrell.