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Title: Successfully creates a world where magic is possible
Review: Susanna Clarke's novel transgresses the boundaries of Victorian literary fiction, fantasy, and the historical novel. As a fan of some of the Victorians myself, I found Clarke's imitation of their writing style and novelistic structure to be quite precise. Her concerns with the human soul, with survival after death, and with the struggle of good and evil within a human being are both modern and typical of the 19th century.The reader slowly walks into a world that is partly familiar and partly quite bizarre. It's the English drawing-room, calling-card era, with the overlay of magic, an art that is allegedly long forgotten. Clarke's mock-scholarly footnotes are charming.However, the book takes just a bit too long to get started and to invite the reader in.
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