Mini-review: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

[tamaranth]

Well, I'm done. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is exactly the right length to read on a Plymouth weekend -- train there, train back and sluggish recovery time once home. I did enjoy it very much, and I liked the authorial voice (evident without being intrusive). That said, I felt curiously unsatisfied by the ending; unattached to any of the characters; more intrigued by the hinted backstory than by the plot of the actual novel; and wondering just how much of the hype is simply because it's so very long. (Well, long in comparison to average novel: not that substantial when set next to any one part of the Baroque Cycle. I have just done a word-count on Quicksilver: 396,000 words. Does that make the whole thing the first (?) million-word novel?)

JS&MN kept reminding me of something, and finally I pinned it down: Sylvia Townsend Warner's delightfully urbane Kingdoms of Elfin. Maybe it's just that they're both very grounded in English faery-lore: but it seems more than that, a matter of style as well as content. Also reminded of Patricia McKillip (integration with the land) and some images from Alan Garner, Susan Cooper et al.

And it's beautifully English, right down to that very telling tag of faery lands as being 'on the other side of the rain'. Glorious writing and a great many bits that I'd like to quote -- and will, no doubt, just as soon as I have the thing to hand. But it is rather heavy ...

Comments

[reddragdiva]

Not even close to the first million-word novel. In the early days of novels, for example, you'd have things sprawling across ten volumes. In the present day, Lord Of The Rings is one novel cut into three pieces for publication. And, of course, there's Mission Earth - 1.2 million words cut into ten pieces (they were considering cutting it into three).

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

I've no idea about the wordcount of LOTR, but the three volumes are a great deal slimmer than those of the Baroque cycle. You're probably right about Victorian novels, though. As for Mission Earth, is it a single novel or a series? The thought of cutting it into very many pieces is appealing!

[reddragdiva]

The Wikipedia article (which I wrote most of) references the Robert Vaughn Young post to alt.religion.scientology in which he recounts the horror of being Hubbard's literary editor. "When Hubbard's manuscript of "Mission Earth" (or "ME" as we called it) came in to Author Services, Inc. (ASI), it arrived as one volume, typed on legal-sized paper and on a manual. It came in a banker's box with each chapter in a separate file folder ... Hubbard said it should be cut up into three or maybe ten sections and for us to decide and suggest. Well, ten volumes make more money than three do so naturally we said ten. Great, he said, and more instructions followed."

[reddragdiva]

Remembrance Of Things Past clocks in at nine and a half million bytes, which would be about 1.5 million words (at six bytes a "word"). Clarissa comes in at 5388KB (adding up the volumes on Project Gutenberg), which would be pushing the million.

[drplokta]

I think Peter F Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy comes in at well over a million words, and was the longest single fictional prose narrative in the English language at least until the Baroque Cycle -- and it still may be, as they're also very thick books.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

Night's Dawn is, as you say, trilogy, not single novel. And I'd argue for LOTR being a trilogy too. Stephenson's said that The Baroque Cycle is really just a single novel; and structurally I think I agree.

[reddragdiva]

LotR was written as a single work, with an appendix. It was cut into six "books". It was published as a "trilogy". I learnt this from the extra DVD features on The Two Towers :-D

I really need to write "Longest novels" for Wikipedia. Pointers to good sources welcomed!

Cryptonomicon is a standalone; I suspect calling the whole thing a "novel" is retconning.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

Cryptonomicon is definitely a standalone, but the Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, System of the World) works thematically as a single novel. Though not as light reading, except in e-book format.

[reddragdiva]

I suppose if people can string short stories into "novels" ...

Wikipedia article on The Lord Of The Rings talks about its status as a single work. It was intended to be a single massive tome, but post-war paper shortages did not allow this.

I have also started List of longest novels at Wikipedia :-D

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Well, Susanna has implied that her next novel will be a sequel - so perhaps we shall see a final resolution. I do have to admit that I found Strange's last words to be quite moving...

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

what she said (http://www.livejournal.com/users/tamaranth/135258.html) was that the next novel was set in the same world, but it's not a direct sequel. I suspect we will hear more of Strange, though.

(And re your comment on that earlier post: I think the person who asked her about whether magic only happened in England had a good point. It is very much English magic throughout, performed by English magicians wherever they may be (though is there a mention of a French magician? I can't recall.)

[pecos.livejournal.com]

I didn't read your post 'cause I'm only half-way through the book, but can we chat about it when I'm done?