strange and random happenstance

Stardust was the second book by Neil Gaiman that I read. It's probably not his most well known piece, people tending to favor his more popular works from American Gods to The Sandman. Stardust is kind of somewhere inbetween with fairies and stars fallen to earth. And the truth is, I can see why people just aren't as engaged with it because I spent the entire afternoon one dark and dreary December 31st trying to finish it so that I could start the new year with a fresh new book, something miles away from Stardust. I couldn't bear the thought of having this book hanging over me at the start of another year. Yet I'm not here to talk about my dissatisfaction with the book, I'm here to talk about the movie that came out over two years later in the summer of 2007. Because I had disliked the book so thoroughly I oddly had no expectations of the movie. I literally was just excited to see so many British actors I loved from television on the big screen, from Henry Cavill to Nathaniel Parker, Jason Flemyng to Mark Heap, and especially Julian Rhind-Tutt to Mark Williams! Also, never forget Ricky Gervais is in this movie fresh off the success of Extras.

My friends thought I might have been a little too excited, I got lots of the "yes yes of course we'll see it" responses with the underlying message being "will you be quiet about it if we agree to go?" It came out the weekend before my birthday and it really was an early gift, despite the grumbling company.  

Stardust is literally one of my favorite movies. A stellar cast, a wonderful love story, magic, humor, a flying ship, oh, and the realization that I actually like Mark Strong. The movie captures that same ephemeral quality that is in The Princess Bride that you can't quite capture if you set out to replicate it. Just look to Neil's own flop MirrorMask which was deliberately meant to be Labyrinth for a new generation. MirrorMask is best forgotten, unlike Stardust. Stardust showed me that you really never can tell about books and their adaptations. They just might surprise you. Just as a great book can make a horrible movie, so can a mediocre book make a fabulous movie. Preconceptions get us nowhere and if we leave them at the door we might be surprised. Though I do think it's time for me to give the book another chance. I've only journeyed back to Wall in the delightful short story that Susanna Clarke set in Gaiman's universe, but you never know, Stardust might end up like The Princess Bride for me, the book and the movie being equally good for entirely different reasons.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 2 comments  

Labels: American Gods, Birthday, Gaiman Gala, Gaiman Reminiscence, Labyrinth, MirrorMask, Nathaniel Parker, Neil Gaiman, Ricky Gervais, Sandman, Stardust, Susanna Clarke, The Ladies of Grace Adieu, The Princess Bride, Wall

The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke
Published by: Bloomsbury USA
Publication Date: October 17th, 2006
Format: Hardcover, 1235 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Magic is more prevalent then Jonathan Strange cares to consider as he sees three women reveling in a spell successfully concluded. Mr. Norrell might think that it's only in the past that great magic was done and only in books that one might learn magic, but even the humblest tapestry might have a magical purpose. And love, well, love can make you do almost anything in it's pursuit, even destroy the most magical of enchantments. In these stories Susanna Clarke tells us a few tales of magic and imagination from the world of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. What happens when the Duke of Wellington's horse goes through a hole in a wall created by Neil Gaiman? What is the result when fairy magic finally brings a long delayed bridge to town? And what happens when the great Raven King, John Uskglass is felled by a simple charcoal burner? Anything might happen with just a touch of magic.

Sometimes we can be dazzled by an author and fail to see what should be apparent. We loved their previous work so this new work must be brilliant, it just must be, how could it be otherwise? We remember what is brilliant and forget the chaff. Never is this more apparent then in a collection of short stories where it's easy to forget the bad and only cling to the memorable. In the two years between reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and The Ladies of Grace Adieu Susanna Clarke had become my favorite author so I thought she could do no wrong. The stories I didn't like I assumed I just didn't understand. Plus, there could be no denying the gorgeous production value of the book with Charles Vess's illustrations, which add another level of distractive beauty. I have since come to realize the humanity and fallibility of authors more and realized just what a mixed bag The Ladies of Grace Adieu really is.

The problem is that sometimes these stories take themselves too seriously. Yet Clarke's work works when she doesn't take herself too seriously and seems to have an arched brow over even the most trifling of matters. In Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell anything that might be too serious is brought down a peg with a well placed wry footnote. Here her footnotes are few and far between. The subtle mockery of the academic is replaced at times with an earnestness that just doesn't work. Her stories become turgid and staid. Clarke needs to remember to not take herself too seriously.

If we compare the light and humorous "Antickes and Frets" with the abysmal "On Lickerish Hill" I think we can clearly see the two ends of the spectrum. "Antickes and Frets" dealing with Mary Queen of Scots and a new found obsession for embroidery is witty and droll in the many plots to bring down Queen Elizabeth, whereas "On Lickerish Hill" is a painful retelling of Rumpelstiltskin. Firstly, did we really need yet another retelling of this tale? Rumpelstiltskin, while important in fairy lore to point out the importance of names, is easily the most boring fairy tale I can think of. But more importantly did it really need to be written in faux olde tyme language with horrid spelling and vocabulary? No it did not!

What is interesting to the Clarke fanatic though is comparing the differing views of the same world as presented in The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. What one clearly sees is that, as one suspected all along, the two great magician's of the age are more ignorant then they would like us to believe. There is a lot more going on in the world then these two learned gentlemen know or would like to admit. Magic has always stayed around, it hasn't "disappeared" as they so ominously prophesied. Yes, they did bring it back into the more glaring public arena, but it has been subtly continuing all along in out of the way places and often by people who you would least expect, like women and the other "lower orders." It makes the aforementioned fanatic long for her next book that supposedly sees this world through the eyes of these lower orders. Ah, the stories they could tell and hopefully one day will.

As to these women... what is interesting about Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is that, while there is a strong male presence, the book to me is subversively feminine. The narrator is female, and the power the men grasp for seems to have, in the past, been easily mastered by females, and probably still is if they'd bother to ask a female. If her first book is subversively feminine, The Ladies of Grace Adieu is overtly feminine. In only two of the eight stories are men the protagonists. Every other story revels in women and their powers. The stories even take great glee in repressed and oppressed women getting the better of their male counterparts. Magic still is strong in this domestic sphere. "The Duke of Wellington Misplaces His Horse" and "Antickes and Frets" takes the magical power of women even further by showing a distinctly feminine art, that of embroidery, being used to magical purposes. So while it may be uneven, the message stays strong and provides a nice counterpoint to Clarke's previous work.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 2 comments  

Labels: Charles Vess, Duke Wellington, John Uskglass, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Mary Queen of Scots, Neil Gaiman, Queen Elizabeth, Regency Magic, Rumpelstiltskin, Susanna Clarke, The Ladies of Grace Adieu

Susanna Clarke is like the Harper Lee of fantastical alternative history, she hit it out of the park with her first and only novel. If we want to get technical, she's more J.D. Salinger, having done the aforementioned novel and a compilation of short stories, but I have issues with Salinger, so Lee it is. Clarke spent most of her childhood traveling around the north of England devouring the works of Austen, Dickens, and Conan Doyle. After graduating from Oxford she spent some time abroad teaching English during which she first got the idea for Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. "I had a kind of waking dream ... about a man in 18th century clothes in a place rather like Venice, talking to some English tourists. And I felt strongly that he had some sort of magical background – he'd been dabbling in magic, and something had gone badly wrong."

Returning to England she worked in publishing while seriously contemplating starting what would become her masterpiece. She took a fantasy and science-fiction writing workshop taught by her future partner, Colin Greenwood, to come to grips with her writing. Greenwood was so impressed by the quality of her first story, as well as the polish for a first time writer, that he sent her story, The Ladies of Grace Adieu, to his friend, Neil Gaiman, who was astounded by her assurance and said "It was like watching someone sit down to play the piano for the first time and she plays a sonata." The book was bought by Bloomsbury in 2003 and was published in 2004. My father read an early review of the book and said it sounded like it was right up my alley. I fell in love with it as soon as I started to read it. Two years later Bloomsbury published The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, named after the story which had so wowed Greenwood and Gaiman. She spent ten years writing one of my favorite books ever and ten years on I await with baited breath hoping that her new book will one day manifest itself. If not, she will remain my Harper Lee (minus recent developments), and I do have that miniseries adaptation to look forward to...

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens, Harper Lee, J.D. Salinger, Jane Austen, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Neil Gaiman, Oxford, Regency Magic, Susanna Clarke, The Ladies of Grace Adieu

Jane Austen is perfection. I think the majority of us can agree on this. It's hard to beat perfection. In fact, I would say it's nigh on impossible, you can't get higher then the highest degree now can you? There's none more black. That is why I've never been a fan of retellings, reimaginings, or continuations of her works. It's not on. Her books are perfect in and of themselves, there doesn't need to be more. So stop. There are of course exceptions to this rule, but taken as a whole all they do is prove the rule. Jane Austen is magic, so how to write a book that is just as magical? Why not literally add magic? In fact there's more and more writers who are combining the Regency world of Austen with magic and I say yes! It's taking Austen to the next level and there's so many clever and unique ways all these different writers are taking to get there and I'm just along for the ride.

The first book I picked up with this unique fusion was Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and I was hooked. I am beyond excited that this wondrous book has finally been made into a miniseries by the BBC and that got me thinking... there are so many Regency books with a magical bent that perhaps now is the time to declare my love of them to the world. With the television adaptation of Susanna Clarke's book as well as the end of Mary Robinette Kowal's Glamourist Histories series what better time for a celebration? So March and April are being dedicated to "Regency Magic" with author profiles, a few of whom are stopping by to answer some questions, reviews, a giveaway, and hopefully a bewitchingly good time! Now how about that giveaway?

The Prize:
A paperback copy of Susanna Clarke's The Ladies of Grace Adieu

The Rules:
1. Open to EVERYONE (for clarification, this means international too).

2. Please make sure I have a way to contact you if your name is drawn, either your blogger profile or a link to your website/blog or you could even include your email address with your comment(s) or email me.

3. Contest ends Thursday, April 30th at 11:59PM CST

4. How to enter: Just comment on this post for a chance to win!

5. And for those addicted to getting extra entries:

• +1 for answering the question: Would you choose to visit the magical version or non magical reality of Regency England?
• +2 for becoming a follower
• +10 if you are already a follower
• +10 for each time you advertise this contest - blog post, sidebar, twitter (please @eliza_lefebvre), etc. (but you only get credit for the first post in each platform, so tweet all you like, and I thank you for it, but you'll only get the +10 once from twitter). Also please leave a link! 
• +10 for each comment you leave on other Regency Magic posts with something other then "I hope I win!" 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 2 comments  

Labels: Caroline Stevermer, Giveaway, Glamourist Histories, Jane Austen, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Magic, Mary Robinette Kowal, Regency, Regency Magic, Stephanie Burgis, Susanna Clarke, The Ladies of Grace Adieu