Resumo de Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrel

Have you ever thought that it would be nice to have Faeries at the bottom of your garden?
If the answer is yes, then perhaps you ought to read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke; you may well begin to have certain reservations about these magical and ethereal creatures.
The book is a beautifully crafted tale, written in the style of a learned Victorian treatise, concerning the restoration of English magic. Do not be fooled however, the main protagonists have their own agendas and although there are many whimsical accounts of attempts to bring real magic back into the world there is also a much darker side to the story, which suggests things in the magical world are not always what they seem.
There is a distinct theme running through the storyline warning it is not always a good idea to dabble in matters of which one has no real understanding.
Mr Norrel, despite his claims, is deceitful and underhanded. He just wants to be the only magician. To this end he systematically buys every available ancient book on magic and stores them in his own library, which is hidden from the eyes of man by its own peculiar spell. He is a book-learned magician and by removing the volumes from general circulation his aim is to promote himself and find world renown.
Jonathan Strange on the other hand, has a natural, inherent ability in the craft and despite Mr Norrell?s attempts at secrecy manages to glean enough from the few remaining books available to earn certain notoriety. This culminates in him becoming, eventually, the official magician to the Duke of Wellington during his Peninsular Campaign against Napoleon.
There is a certain whimsy in the passages written of his attempts to control the weather and conjuror up magical roads for Wellington?s army to march along; these obviously disappear as soon as a French soldier sets foot on them.
Meanwhile, things are taking that darker turn I mentioned as Mr Norrell, in an attempt to ingratiate himself with a high ranking government official for his own personal preferment, agrees to raise the man?s wife from the dead.
He enlists the help of a Faerie and it is from this point in the narrative things begin to awry for all parties. The Faerie draws up what would seem to be a fairly innocuous agreement but one that turns out to be a constructive warning for all of us concerning the reading of small print on any contract.
Whilst honouring the letter of the covenant the Faerie reduces the poor woman to circumstances too dreadful to contemplate and even her male servant is magically trapped by this web of trickery. It is not long also, before even Jonathan Strange?s wife is ensnared by this amoral creature, who, whilst seeming to be quite naïve about the ways of the world, is nonetheless totally enamoured of his own abilities.
The efforts of Mr Norrell & Jonathan strange to extricate both themselves and the ladies from this unwholesome alliance are aided by a shadowy tattooed man who throughout the book appears as someone on the periphery of events but turns out to be a quite pivotal character.
Whilst the protagonists remain in thrall to powers over which they now realise they have no real control at least the two women involved are released from their magical bondage.
A salutary tale, which contains many anecdotes concerning magical lore, this is still a distinct warning to us all not to become embroiled in matters of which we have little understanding and even less ability to direct.

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