Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - S. Clarke

I am very happy I decided to reread this book because it is an incredible book and even better than I remembered. I just wished it was longer - the third part definitively had a different pace and felt a bit rushed. It’s a bit like watching a tv series and noticing there are only 15 minutes left to the end of the episode but there are still so many things going and oh boy how will they manage to explain everything.

I also wondered if this book played a role in the development of my enchantment with Venice or if Venice’s presence in it was one of the reasons I liked it already years ago. I did not remember Venice being included.

A succint definition of the city:

Venice - the city built of equal parts of sunlit marble and sunlit sea

I realize while writing these notes that transcribing quotes does not really do justice to the book, whose merits lie in large part (I think) in convincingly and consistently setting up an atmosphere. The reader is engulfed in said world and then it becomes easy (relatively speaking) to produce inside jokes or attachments to characters. But then just pasting things out does not really work.

My conclusion in general is that for this one case it was certainly a good decision to trust nostalgia.