TEXT A What kind of magic can
make an 800-page novel seem too short Whatever it is, debut author Susanna
Clarke is possessed by it, and her astonished readers will surely hope she never
recovers. Her epic history of an alternative, magical England is so beautifully
realized that not one of the many enchantments Clarke chronicles in the book
could ever be as potent or as quickening as her own magnificent
narrative. It is 1806, and Gilbert Norrell is the only true
magician in England. He sets out to restore the practice of magic to a nation
that has not seen it for more than 300 years. But there is an odd and fateful
twist to Norrell’s character: he is as scholarly and insufferably pedantic as he
is gifted. In short, Norrell is the most boring and unmagical person imaginable.
This is Clarke’s masterstroke, the necessary touch of ordinary candleshine in
the midst of all the uncanny fairy light she dispenses. Enter
Jonathan Strange, the intuitive magician--the natural-- who can improvise in a
flash what Norrell has gleaned from long study. Strange becomes Norrell’s pupil,
but soon the tension between their styles mounts to a breaking point. The two
men realize that they have a fundamental disagreement about how to approach the
mysterious and terrifying sources of English magic, in the face of which even
Albus Dumbledore might find himself unnerved. Just as Norrell
and Strange apprentice themselves to a Golden Age of medieval magicians, Clarke
tethers her craft to the great 19th-century English masters of the novel, Jane
Austen and Charles Dickens. The book offers not only an Austen-like. inquiry
into the fine human line between ridiculous flaw and serious consequence, but
also a Dickensian flow of language in which a comical surplus of detail rings at
last with certain and inevitable significance. This elixir of
literary influences gives the story its delightful texture. But there is so much
more to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell an energy buckling and straining at
the edges of the book in sheer imaginative overflow, just as the realm of Faerie
buckles and strains beyond the edges of England’s green fields, beckoning us
down the overgrown path and through the dark wood. Thus it
happens that a novel of 800 pages seems far too short. This is the
strangest--and, as we gratefully come to understand, the "norrellest"--magic a
book lover could wish for. Which of the following would be the most suitable title for this passage
A.Jonathan Strange &Mr. Norrell. B.The Magic of a Spell-Binding Debut. C.Susanna Clarke’s Great Successes. D.The Golden Age of Medieval Magicians.