Delving into the British folklore, Clarke opens up a fascinating magical world, which you will not want to leave, and takes her task quite seriously. The episodic-in-nature plot is delightful to read, and, in style, it reminds of Dickens’s Bleak House. He finds, however, that not only the reclusive Mr Norrell has an established library filled with rare books on the practice of magic, he also claims to be a practising magician himself! Mr Norrell soon desires to establish himself as the only practising magician in the country. The profession of a practising magician has fallen in reputation, and Mr Segundus comes to inquire of another magician who lives in Yorkshire why this is the case. Practical magic has declined in England and there are apparently no practising magicians left in the country. He is a new addition to the society of magicians in York, England. The novel begins in autumn 1806 with Mr Segundus, a theoretical magician, wanting to know why there was no more magic done in England. It is a very long book, but it is totally absorbing from the very first page. Neil Gaiman called Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell “ the finest English novel of the fantastic written in the last seventy years”, and I will agree with him. All of the mythology of the world and the magic and the kind of costume drama elements were always secondary to the realism of it, and we only used them to make it feel like it could be a real story if you just take the leap of faith that maybe magic existed once upon a time.Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell – ★★★★★ Harness: Fantasy is very alienating if you don’t do it right. I used all of that background material, which we don’t necessarily go into in a lot of detail it just helps to make it more real.ĭid you have concerns that people who haven’t read the book would be turned off by the material? Some of the kind of nonsense stories that Lady Pole tells come from footnotes, and the auction scene at the end of episode two is a footnote. I just treated it as opportunities for world building. How much of that material made it into the show? The book has hundreds of footnotes giving ancillary information about the story. See more TV Shows That Failed to Survive the 2014-15 Season Who knows how much she’s written or what she’s written or whether she’ll ever publish, but if she ever does, you bet your ass we’ll be there. I do believe there is more material in her mind. There is an unseen bond between us and the material and between us and Susanna, who is the most incredible, imaginative author - and yet reclusive and fascinating and interesting.
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