![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() It is a sign of a master storyteller working at close to peak performance. It shows itself in the effortless naturalism of these clearly contra-natural stories. These operations aren't always pleasant, or even kind ("Mrs Mabb", "Antickes and Frets") sometimes, though, the balance of justice gets a magical turbocharge with satisfying results ("Tom Brightwind or How the Fairy Bridge Was Built at Thoresby", "John Uskglass and the Cumbrian Charcoal Burner") and for the rest? Sheer pleasure to read.Clarke creates this magical England carefully, a term I use despite its connotations of grindhood and laborious tedium the care, gratefully, is virtually invisible to the reader. But that's like complaining that you only won $10 million in the lottery."oh shut up" is the best response.Nine stories set in Miss Clarke's vastly improved nineteenth-century England, the one where magical beings are and the operations of magic happen to all the people. Norrell, because it would have made a perfect gateway drug to the longer, more intense, and more exhausting high of the Big One. I wish it had been available before Jonathan Strange and Mr. What a delectable cocktail peanut of a book. ![]()
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