Into the Archive: The Wood at Midwinter

The Wood at Midwinter, by Susanna Clarke [Bloomsbury. October 2024]

“From the bestselling and prize-winning author of Piranesi and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, an enchanting, beautifully illustrated short story set in the world of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

'A church is a sort of wood. A wood is a sort of church. They're the same thing really.'

“Nineteen-year-old Merowdis Scot is an unusual girl. She can talk to animals and trees-and she is only ever happy when she is walking in the woods.

“One snowy afternoon, out with her dogs and Apple the pig, Merowdis encounters a blackbird and a fox. As darkness falls, a strange figure enters in their midst-and the path of her life is changed forever.

“Featuring gorgeous illustrations [by Victoria Sawdon] truly worthy of the magic of this story and an afterword by Susanna Clarke explaining how she came to write it, this is a mesmerizing, must-have addition to any fantasy reader's bookshelf.”

-Amazon

I didn’t even know this book existed until the last day of December, and I knew when I saw it that it was my one book for January. I sent off for it then, and it came today. It is a beautiful little book; the picture does not do it justice. The blue and white is wonderfully accented by the gilt lettering and figures, giving it the look of a wintery medieval manuscript.

It is listed at 64 pages; of those, only 50 of those are dedicated to the story, and those are generously illustrated, so the text is really shorter. The afterword is 8 pages long. Clarke explains how the short story was written in 2020 for Christmas broadcast on BBC 4, and how it was influenced by the work of Jorge Luis Borges and Kate Bush.

Though it takes place as the same world as Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, it can be described in one way as the exact opposite of that work; while the other book is a thick tome, this is a wafer-thin little volume. My copy arrived with thin scratches on the cover, not immediately noticeable, just slightly marring its beauty. The shipping and handling cost almost as much as the book itself. Clarke is supposed to be working on a novel-length sequel to JS&MN; I’m beginning to wonder.

 

Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke: Into the Library

Piranesi is the third book from Susanna Clarke. The first two were her monumental fantasy “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell” and its follow-up volume of short stories “The Ladies of Grace-Adieu”. Both took place in her alternate timeline of England during the Napoleonic Wars, except with magic. To a certain extent I was expecting, not the same world, but something on the level of JS&MN (782 pages long; it took ten years to write – and she has had about sixteen years – admittedly slowed by her work on a sequel to JS&MN and by ill health - to produce Piranesi). What I found is something on a much more human scale at 245 pages, but I do not judge quality by quantity. I read it in a single day, but that was because it was so good, I could not stop. It is both a fantasy and a compelling mystery.

 

          “Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.

“There is one other person in the house―a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.” – Amazon.

 

          The House and its nature recall elements from other Fantasy classics. Perhaps the most obvious is the almost infinite Castle of Gormenghast with its labyrinthine corridors and eccentric nomenclature. But it also partakes of the timeless forgetful nature of the Wood Between the Worlds from the Narnia books; and there are two direct if well-camouflaged references to C. S. Lewis’s work elsewhere in the story. It seems to me to also recall the Neitherworld in Lev Grossman’s ‘Magician’ books, but that may simply be because of his own Narnian influence. I do not mention these similarities to complain of any intellectual piracy but to revel in the echoes of old themes built upon by new authors. Clarke’s invention is singular enough to claim it as a novel vintage.

The book itself is a beautiful item clothed in purple with gilded lines and black and white accents. The only flaw is that the front cover is slightly indented to show the edge of the ‘inside cover’, as it were, which is replete with blurbs. In my experience, covers like this tend to be problematic, as extra care is needed to shelve them to avoid damage. The front cover, after only one reading, is already showing a pronounced tendency to curl.

I think that the only other things that I have to note is that ‘Piranesi’ is a reference to Giovanni Batista Piranesi, an 18^th-Century Italian archaeologist, architect, and artist, famous for his etchings of Rome and of imaginary, fantastic prisons, and that the book won the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction.  

The Magician's Niblings

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke.

This novel, a masterpiece of modern fantasy, was around for quite a while before I brought myself to give it a try, and then I couldn’t get my own Hardback copy fast enough. “Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is the debut novel by British writer Susanna Clarke. Published in 2004, it is an alternative history set in 19th-century England around the time of the Napoleonic Wars. Its premise is that magic once existed in England and has returned with two men: Gilbert Norrell and Jonathan Strange. Centred on the relationship between these two men, the novel investigates the nature of "Englishness" and the boundaries between reason and unreason … It has been described as a fantasy novel, an alternative history, and a historical novel. The narrative draws on various Romantic literary traditions, such as the comedy of manners, the Gothic tale, and the Byronic hero. The novel's language is a pastiche of 19th-century writing styles, such as those of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. Clarke describes the supernatural with careful detail. She supplements the text with almost 200 footnotes, outlining the backstory and an entire fictional corpus of magical scholarship.” – Wikipedia. What they don’t mention is that it is like a cross between “Lud-in-the-Mist” and “Little, Big”, and worthy to stand beside them. Illustrations by Portia Rosenberg.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Fantasy. Novel. Hardback.

The Ladies of Grace Adieu and other Stories, by Susanna Clarke. Illustrated by Charles Vess.

A collection of short stories in the magical milieu of “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell”. That fact that it is illustrated by Charles Vess reminds me of the connection Clarke has to Neil Gaiman, her longtime friend and supporter. The stories also remind me of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s “Kingdoms of Elfin”. A pleasant read.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Anthology. Fantasy. Hardback.

The Magicians, The Magician King, and The Magician’s Land, by Lev Grossman.

I don’t know why I decided to give Grossman a try. I can only surmise that having heard good things about it, I decided I would give it a try … at the right price. I specifically went into Goodwill looking for it, on the very remote chance it would be there, and THERE IT WAS, a hardback copy for $1. The only other time I can remember that happening is when I went grimly through the staggering piles of kids books at Half’s, in specific hopes  of finding “The Pedant and the Shuffly” (an obscure book which had been published at least twenty years before, and THERE IT WAS! To explain the series, a guy (Quentin) discovers 1) there is a secret school of magic and 2) that the fantasy land of Fillory that was his favorite childhood reading is real, the books being based on the actual visits of five English children as told to their adult ‘friend’. He and his friends at magical school (‘Brakebills’) find a way to go to Fillory, kill ‘the Beast’ that threatens it, and become kings and queens (shades of Narnia!) The second book covers their attempts to rule, and the third is a “Voyage of the Dawn Treader”-like tour of the outer islands. The books are full of fantasy allusions from T. H. White to Adventure Time. Has been adapted into an increasing disappointing TV series that I ceased to watch after the first season. But these books are really good and, well, magically delicious.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Fantasy. Novel. Hardbacks.

 Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.

“The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch.” I already knew Terry Pratchett was a good, funny writer, so I decided to give this collaboration a shot. The opening was very promising – a dedication to G. K. Chesterton, “a man who knew what was going on.” When a misplaced Anti-Christ grows up without proper demonic influence, his powers may still bring about the end of the world. It’s up to Crowley, the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and Aziraphale, the angel who had the flaming sword, to protect their cushy assignments on Earth and avert the Apocalypse with the help of a band of concerned humans and the detailed (but hard to understand) prophecies of a 16^th century witch. When it came out it was compared to Douglas Adams or if “The Omen” had been written by Monty Python. Death (one of the Four Horsemen) is almost exactly like Discworld’s Death, CAPITALS AND ALL. Got this copy in the early 90’s. There’s a TV series on Amazon, which I haven’t seen, but it was adapted by Gaiman (Pratchett being dead now), so you never know.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Fantasy. Novel. Softcover.

Nibling: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/words-were-watching-nibling#:~:text=Nibling%20is%20a%20gender%2Dneutral,niece%22%20or%20%22nephew%22.&text=That's%20right%3A%20nibling.,comes%20from%20niece%20and%20nephew.