"The Ladies of Grace Adieu" by Susanna Clarke

I have been wanting to read this book for quite some time now, but just haven't been able to get around to it.

This is the unoffical sequel to "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell" by the same author. I say unoffical because this is not a novel in the sense of the first book. "The Ladies of Grace Adieu" is a collection of unconnected short stories set in the same universe as Clarke first book, and shares several of the same characters. Jonathan Strange himself appears in the first story, which shares it's name with the collection.

I quite like short stories. Often I find that with many authors I tend to prefer their short stories to their novels (Stephen King for instance). I enjoyed many of Clarke's short stories in this collection, but more than anything else I found that they left me wanting more. I think that Susanna Clarke will join the short list of authors whose longer works I prefer.

I really loved "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell". I know that many people I've talked to about it have had mixed reviews, but there was just something about the book that drew me in. I found the same thing about some of the stories contained in this collection, but not all of them. Actually, to be prefectly honest, I didn't like the length of many of the short stories. Some of the stories I felt had a decent plot idea for a ten page story, but too much fluff thickening it out to twenty or thirty pages. And then others stories I felt had great characters that were so interesting that I could have read a whole novel about them - even if they didn't do anything and all of the pages were just fluff.

I still quite enjoyed this book, and it was nice to read something with a different pace than the other books I've read lately. As I said above, there are a lot of interesting characters. SOme of these are well known (like the Duke of Wellington or Queen Mabb) and others are complete unknown. I think "Tom Brightwind" was my favorite of the short stories, and that story's two previously unknown protagonists were my favorite of the characters.

Charles Vess contributes an amazing full-page illustration, as well as a detailed title page, to each of the stories. I first encountered the artist through a number of Neil Gaiman's comic stories. (Interestingly enough, Gaiman winning praise of "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell" is what finally pushed me over the fence I was sitting on with regards to the novel. I suspect the three must be friends, in some way.)

I hope that now Clarke will opted to write another full length novel, even if that does mean she leaves the beloved world of Strange and Norell behind.