Jonathan Strange Bertie Carvel
Mr Norrell Eddie Marsan
The Gentleman Marc Warren
Arabella Charlotte Riley
Lady Pole Alice Englert
Sir Walter Pole Samuel West
Childermass Enzo Cilenti


Episode 1 of 7: The Friends of English Magic: Determined to restore magic to its former glory and prove himself England's greatest magician, Mr Norrell makes a dangerous pact with a mysterious being, while the charming Jonathan Strange, more interested in drinking and winning the hand of the beautiful Arabella than reading magical books, learns he too has magical gifts.

Was that Mick Fleetwood who warns 'Raven Is Coming'? As with Cromwell episode 1, this was mumbled. What happened to diction and ennunciation?




Episode 2 of 7: How Is Lady Pole?: Mr Norrell takes on Jonathan Strange as his apprentice. However, it soon becomes clear that the pupil outshines the master. And something is clearly very wrong with the resurrected Lady Pole.

Loved this episode. Loved it I tell ya!

bookshelves: translation, one-penny-wonder, norway, families, epic-proportions, summer-2012, tbr-busting-2012, published-2001, teh-demon-booze, teh-brillianz

Translated from the Norwegian by Kenneth Steven

Opening: Thirteen hours in Berlin and I was already a wreck.

Came across this author/translator combination in the menacing short story about a barber in The Norwegian Feeling for Real

Page 19: 'Like a Sphinx,' I replied. 'Like a blue sphinx that has torn loose from a floodlit plinth.'

Page 29:  'Now I'll tell you word for word what that wretched creature wrote! We, his close followers, now bow our heads at his death.' (This refers to the afternoon edition of Aftenposten 7th May 1945.)

"Chocolate Girl  pulls Arnold down beside her and puts her arms around him. Arnold grows in her arms and she explains just about everything to him."

page 141:
Mundus vult decipi - The world will be taken in
Ergo decipiatur - thus it is deceived

Page 159: 'He talks like a novel we once threw in the stove.'

Page 177: Røst ö, a fullstop in the sea "

Page 179: 

'And besides, they haven't tarmac-ed over the Moskenes whirlpool yet.'

Page 239: "  Cliff Richard - Living Doll Mum and Dad danced in the living room and for the remainder of the night they were equally loud in bed."

Page 332: 'Why is it called Greenland when there is only ice there?' I asked. 'Because the first people who reached it found a beautiful flower called convallaria, Barnum.'"

Page 335: I skipped supper and went to bed before ten, even though I wasn't especially tired and I actually loathed the slow movement before you fell asleep, when you just lie there and time stretches like an elastic band, like round brackets, like a blue balloon.

Page 475: And Lauren Bacall looks at Bogart - she glows, glows in black and white, and her nostrils flare like an animal's, the nostrils of a lioness. And she laughs - Bacall's laughter - she mocks him, You're a mess, aren't you? And Bogart just answers, I'm not very tall either. Next time I'll come on stilts.

Page 531: Sinnataggen, Frogner Park. Famous statue of an angry child."

IMHO The defining moment of this story comes on Page 686: 'What's your favourite film?'

'Hunger,' I told her.

She smiled, pleased with the answer. 'So your script is a kind of response to Hamsun?'

'You could well say that,' I agreed.

'And your description of this farm, which is almost synonomous with a penal colony, is a kind of revolt against Hamsun's fascism?'

"

The best summation I can come up with is that this documents the Norwegians return to Hamsun's body of work in these years since he wrote that damnable obituary and this story is Hamsun-esque with a modern makeover. Truly astounding.

bookshelves: teh-brillianz, slavic, absolute-favourites, re-visit-2014, re-read, re-visit-2013, spring-2014

Description: Raskolnikov, a former student who is morbidly self-obsessed, murders an old woman money-lender with a borrowed hatchet in a desperate attempt to free himself from poverty. From the opening pages Dostoyevsky attaches us unflinchingly to his intense and mysteriously anti-hero, creating a web of intimacy and tension which is increasingly claustrophobic. Crime and guilt - its traumatic and inevitable successor - are the central themes running through the novel and the notions of 'justifiable' murder and the worldly retribution are depicted with a deft and razor-sharp precision.

Crime and Punishment both haunts and disturbs, yet, as the critic John Jones wrote, it is 'the most accessible and exciting novel in the world'.



Many reads, and the Kingsley film is a perennial in our house. Now Brazilliant gives me the link to a 2002 BBC version

I'm in raptures... let's see how this pans out.

The massive dome of St. Isaac's Cathedral is made of 100 kilos of pure gold. Designed and built by French architect Auguste de Montferrand.

Great men are not aftraid to be criminals. Does Putin see himself as a great man?

bookshelves: teh-brillianz, fantasy, re-visit-2014, winter-20132014, published-1983, paper-read, fraudio, new-york, north-americas, picaresque, amusing, adventure, architecture, art-forms, epic-proportions, eye-scorcher, love, magical-realism, period-piece

woot - magical realism has a new benchmark in my humble opinion! This is superb stuff, all the characters are so fully realised.

Revisit via audio before the film comes out 14th Feb 2014 and this is narrated by Oliver Wyman. Given the unusually cold weather, dubbed artic vortex, that is subsuming the north americas at this time one could think, at a stretch, that this is a marketing ploy by the movie house sponsor.





“The shelf was filled with books that were hard to read, that could devastate and remake one's soul, and that, when they were finished, had a kick like a mule.”

Film trailer

Film theme tune is 'Wings' by Birdy

The song I would prefer because I'm an Essex fan since first row, west end opening night of Jesus Christ, Superstar

The inscription on the monument refers to the bridge as the "eternal rainbow", a simile used by Jackson Mead.

It is strange having Golem & Jinni on my bedside ipad and this on my daytime mp3 - both are set in an alternative New York City at the turn of the century. Also, I shall have to revisit The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentleman Bastard) to see which thief I prefer.

One book always leads to another, doesn't it!?

21 likes