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Now that I've read it. Some very random and unscientific thoughts on Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. The book, I mean. Because I saw the show first, a lot of this will be compare-contrast, probably. Also, liable to feature a lot of Stephen Black. I have thoughts about Stephen Black.
First though, a few random impressions:
- I spent a lot more time wanting to slap book!Jonathan upside the head than I did show!Jonathan. I don't know, maybe it's just that we're inside his head and we can see him being a twat? That scene with the mirrors, the argument he has with Arabella (and Walter), the way you can actually feel that not a single thing they're saying is penetrating. Jonathan, you absolute muppet. You complete Miss Piggy. I don't know. I love him, but I spent so much more time wanting to do a Major Grant on it and knock him upside the head.
- Conversely, I think I'm actually more forgiving towards book!Norrell than show!Norrell. He's more ... He feels more small and hapless and trapped than in the show. Still astonishingly petty, mind you, and when he does have power he uses it as badly, but he doesn't ... he doesn't have the same flashes of steel you get in the show. It doesn't feel like he's acting out his choices in the same way. Also, he has moments ... That moment where Jonathan realises he's been lying and/or hiding certain aspects of magic from him, because Norrell literally plain forgot that he had to lie about it and started happily lecturing away on imbuing artifacts with power, until Jonathan points out "Um, didn't you say that was impossible last week?". Norrell, love, you're not designed for this subterfuge lark. Leave that to Childermass.
- I am not sure how I feel about Emma at all. I think, I think I prefer show!Emma, there's more of a feel of fire about her and I like that, but book!Emma ... Let's say, as someone who spent a lot of her life struggling with depression, there are moments where book!Emma is painfully familiar. You feel how trapped she is a lot more in the book, her anger feels more helpless and embittered. In the show her fight feels like it could go somewhere, whereas the book ... I think part of the reason I prefer show!Emma is quite probably that she's less painful for me.
- Book!Walter is oddly sympathetic as well. He so clearly has no goddamn clue how to help anyone, or how to make people around him happy, but he equally clearly wants to.
- I ship Emma/Arabella a lot more strongly in the book, I think. Although I kind of shipped them in the show, too (height difference - I don't know why it strikes me so strongly, but it really shows in the ball scenes). In the book, though, the way Arabella turns to Emma for comfort, the way Emma defends her and is so angry at Jonathan on her behalf. I ship them very, very much in the book.
- Drawlight is very odd. Not at all like his show counterpart. I'm, ah. I fear I must disappoint some people and say that I'm still not very fond of him, but he's definitely more fragile and ... not quite innocent, but you get much more of the impression that he had no idea at all what he was getting into. And, let's be honest, nobody deserves Lascelles. Drawlight, Norrell, Mrs Bullworth, nobody. He didn't really deserve Strange, either. It's just ... defrauding people that way. It feels worse and less funny in the book, because Mrs Bullworth is given more dignity and you can feel what's been done to her (sidenote: Jonathan, again, you are such a sanctimonious twat sometimes).
- The wealth of characters that never made the show (or made it in several truncated form) are amazing. I love Lucas and Davey, Ms Redruth, Mrs Bullworth and Haverhill her maid, Mrs Lennox, William of Lanchester, Catherine of Winchester, about half of Wellington's forces, and whole bunch of other people. I know the book was always going to be more full than the show, it has more room, but the cast of characters is lovely and amazing. Also, book Wellington is hilarious. I mean, show!Wellington is also funny, but he's so incredibly dry and pragmatic and hilarious in the book.
- Lascelles is much the same, I think, but I do prefer the book ending for him. It's so needless and pointless and suited to his arrogance. Although he did feel ... Giddy? After Drawlight. I don't think it was guilt, I really do think that he was happy he'd removed something 'ugly' from the world, though there may have been doubts that he dismissed inside himself, but afterwards he feels like a serial killer on a high after his first real kill. His perceptions have shifted, and his emotions are all over the map. Slicing Childermass, walking around armed for the hell of it, needing to do something with his violence. It's not surprising he ended how he did. A slightly more subtle difference from the show, though, was how that ending reflects back on Childermass' shooting in the show. In the book, Lascelles was nowhere near it. I wonder how book!Lascelles would have seen his show counterpart's cowering during the shooting, in light of his views on cowardice there at the end? I don't think he'd take it well.
- I miss Stephen and Vinculus' more visceral connection from the show. I know that is largely because it struck me so strongly. I was probably always going to. I just really miss it in the book. I kept expecting them to click more, and they never really did.
- On the other hand, I see Vinculus/Childermass a LOT more in the book. Their whole first meeting is both funnier and warmer (sidenote: Childermass is also not the best at subterfuge here, Mr Unlikely Milliner, but he's so confident and cheerful about it that it doesn't matter), and they keep that warmth a lot more than in the show, even despite Childermass' much more overtly clinical treatment of Vinculus' body at the end (also again, honey, darling, carving yourself up is a bad idea, yes, so happy you figured that out, what's wrong with you? Pain bad, okay? Don't kill yourself). It's sort of blackly hilarious at the end, when Vinculus is silently and horrifyingly screaming after coming back to life, and Childermass dithers for a moment about calming spells before waving a bottle of wine in Vinculus' face instead. And it works. I like them, they're warmer and darkly funnier together in the book.
- Segundus and Childermass are also a lot funnier as well. The fact that the Hurtfew spell keeps following Segundus, so he actually can't remember Childermass a lot of the time. It's so funny (and kind of creepy cool, the way you realise what's happening, I really like magic sensed and worked around from Segundus' POV in the book). Also him thinking of Childermass as something out of a gothic novel, and Bad Fortune personified, The Ruin of Mr Segundus' Hopes and Dreams. And Childermass bluntly telling him to 'do the magic' at the end, so Mr Segundus does the magic. They're lovely.
- I have mentioned I love Mr Honeyfoot before, I think. Also Mrs Honeyfoot. They're just adorable, okay? Mr Honeyfoot is a sweet adorable honey bear of a man.
- Stephen and the Gentleman is a completely different kettle of fish in the book. Okay. I have to talk about this for a bit. It's really, really pronounced. Both of these characters just ... come across so differently, and their relationship as well.
The Gentleman is much, much more alien here. Maybe it's because of the context built in with the footnotes and his descriptions of other times and ways of life, but he so clearly does not have a human outlook at all, and genuinely doesn't get how creepy he's being. He's scarier, I think. In the show, a lot of what he does feels like malice, regardless of what he says about it, but in the book he just ... Those lives literally don't signify to him. It's not malice, he doesn't care enough about them to be malicious, it's just sheer objectification on his part. People are things. It's terrifying. He can be honestly trying to be nice, and still end up horrifying without even realising it.
Stephen, too, is also ... He's very different. People told me, but I didn't realise how much they were right. Book Stephen has so much more context and background. He feels a lot different. He's got more steel, but he's also much, much more bleak. There's a resignation that you don't get the same sense of in the show. He's also got a lot more ... you can sense how much he's internalised ideas about 'respectability' in the book, how it's armour for him against what his skin means. He clings to it very desperately, but he knows it's hopeless at the same time, which gets so viscerally shown when that man bumps into him in the street and panics, and we literally watch Stephen give up then and there. He knows that's all it takes. It's so incredibly bleak. He's ... he actually reminds me a lot of Norrell, which is not a comparison I ever thought I'd be making. But they do, they both have the same sense of holding to respectability as a shield against the chaos they know is out there, that they know they're helpless against, and the same sense of helplessness and constraint, the chafing of society's demands. It's just that Norrell is able to get himself a lot more power, and maybe consequently never developes the same amount of spine that Stephen has just breathing. There's even a certain amount of similarity in their endings, how they both find a certain freedom in Faerie, away from England, where 'respectability' gets sheared away and they're both left with a task that scares and pleases them (magic for Norrell, a kingdom to organise for Stephen). They're released, in a way. They're freed.
And Stephen and the Gentleman ... Again, very different. Show!Stephen felt like a mouse between a cat's paws, whereas book!Stephen is more like a man who's accidentally grabbed a tiger by the tail. It's still not going to end well, but there are moments where he can almost steer the monster he's grabbed hold of. You also get ... you can see why the Gentleman is attractive to him, at the same time he terrifies him. In contrast to pretty much the entirety of England, the Gentleman never has a single moment of doubt that Stephen is worthy. His idea of helping is terrifying, but there's no doubt that that is actually what he's trying to do. He loves Stephen, even if still in a pretty-plaything sort of way, since the Gentleman no more understands Stephen's thoughts and desires than he does any other human's. You can see why Stephen apologises on killing him. He's not killing his captor, he's killing someone he knows genuinely loved him as best he was able. It says a lot, though ... The run-up to that, what happened to Stephen's mother, his knowledge and despair of what Vinculus' death means for him ... All of England's magic flowers for him, he can avenge everything, every despair the system ever caused him, and he does think about it, but the second Lady Pole comes running out, his instinct is to preserve her. He kills a creature who loves him, because his instinct, regardless of his thoughts, is to save who he can. It says so much about him.
I wish he had a happier ending, though. It's not ... he's free, in a way, and a king, but the sense of bleakness is still there, and he does trade one duty for another. I want someone to hug him. Putting it bluntly. I want him to have someone who doesn't want anything, who won't think anything, who will just wrap their arms around him and let him feel. Let him grieve, let him rage, let him express his despair. I don't even care who. I just really, really badly want someone to hug Stephen.
I wouldn't say no to Mrs Brandy, actually. She was another unexpected delight of the book. Her oblique courtship of him was so sweet and cute before it all went tits up. I wouldn't mind if, somewhere in the aftermath, she finds herself being sweetly and shyly courted back by a damaged fairy king in desperate need of a woman of her calibre by his side. I mean this. I would not say no to that at all.
... I did say I had thoughts on Stephen Black, yes? Hehe. Um. Yeah. I want Stephen to be happy, okay? Both Stephens, as different as they are. I think Stephen/Vinculus(/Childermass) is still my show ship for him, while with the book Stephen/Gentleman in a terrifying sort of way and then maybe Stephen/Mrs Brandy in the aftermath are where I've ended up. I just ... someone be nice to the poor man, okay? Somebody take care of him, I need this very much. He's so crumpled in the show and so incredibly, appallingly bleak in the book. Help. Help now. Thank you.
Anyway! Overall thoughts, I liked the book very very much. I'm not at all sure how I'm going to manage fanfic from here on out, there are places in which the show and the book are VERY different, and there are bits of both that I prefer or don't prefer, and bits that I like equally but in very different ways. I'm not sure how and where I'm going to separate them out. But. I will manage, somehow or other. I have so much to digest right now.
The book is hilarious, though. Both bleaker and funnier than the show. I'm not sure I expected that. It's very blackly funny in places. Heh.
- I spent a lot more time wanting to slap book!Jonathan upside the head than I did show!Jonathan. I don't know, maybe it's just that we're inside his head and we can see him being a twat? That scene with the mirrors, the argument he has with Arabella (and Walter), the way you can actually feel that not a single thing they're saying is penetrating. Jonathan, you absolute muppet. You complete Miss Piggy. I don't know. I love him, but I spent so much more time wanting to do a Major Grant on it and knock him upside the head.
- Conversely, I think I'm actually more forgiving towards book!Norrell than show!Norrell. He's more ... He feels more small and hapless and trapped than in the show. Still astonishingly petty, mind you, and when he does have power he uses it as badly, but he doesn't ... he doesn't have the same flashes of steel you get in the show. It doesn't feel like he's acting out his choices in the same way. Also, he has moments ... That moment where Jonathan realises he's been lying and/or hiding certain aspects of magic from him, because Norrell literally plain forgot that he had to lie about it and started happily lecturing away on imbuing artifacts with power, until Jonathan points out "Um, didn't you say that was impossible last week?". Norrell, love, you're not designed for this subterfuge lark. Leave that to Childermass.
- I am not sure how I feel about Emma at all. I think, I think I prefer show!Emma, there's more of a feel of fire about her and I like that, but book!Emma ... Let's say, as someone who spent a lot of her life struggling with depression, there are moments where book!Emma is painfully familiar. You feel how trapped she is a lot more in the book, her anger feels more helpless and embittered. In the show her fight feels like it could go somewhere, whereas the book ... I think part of the reason I prefer show!Emma is quite probably that she's less painful for me.
- Book!Walter is oddly sympathetic as well. He so clearly has no goddamn clue how to help anyone, or how to make people around him happy, but he equally clearly wants to.
- I ship Emma/Arabella a lot more strongly in the book, I think. Although I kind of shipped them in the show, too (height difference - I don't know why it strikes me so strongly, but it really shows in the ball scenes). In the book, though, the way Arabella turns to Emma for comfort, the way Emma defends her and is so angry at Jonathan on her behalf. I ship them very, very much in the book.
- Drawlight is very odd. Not at all like his show counterpart. I'm, ah. I fear I must disappoint some people and say that I'm still not very fond of him, but he's definitely more fragile and ... not quite innocent, but you get much more of the impression that he had no idea at all what he was getting into. And, let's be honest, nobody deserves Lascelles. Drawlight, Norrell, Mrs Bullworth, nobody. He didn't really deserve Strange, either. It's just ... defrauding people that way. It feels worse and less funny in the book, because Mrs Bullworth is given more dignity and you can feel what's been done to her (sidenote: Jonathan, again, you are such a sanctimonious twat sometimes).
- The wealth of characters that never made the show (or made it in several truncated form) are amazing. I love Lucas and Davey, Ms Redruth, Mrs Bullworth and Haverhill her maid, Mrs Lennox, William of Lanchester, Catherine of Winchester, about half of Wellington's forces, and whole bunch of other people. I know the book was always going to be more full than the show, it has more room, but the cast of characters is lovely and amazing. Also, book Wellington is hilarious. I mean, show!Wellington is also funny, but he's so incredibly dry and pragmatic and hilarious in the book.
- Lascelles is much the same, I think, but I do prefer the book ending for him. It's so needless and pointless and suited to his arrogance. Although he did feel ... Giddy? After Drawlight. I don't think it was guilt, I really do think that he was happy he'd removed something 'ugly' from the world, though there may have been doubts that he dismissed inside himself, but afterwards he feels like a serial killer on a high after his first real kill. His perceptions have shifted, and his emotions are all over the map. Slicing Childermass, walking around armed for the hell of it, needing to do something with his violence. It's not surprising he ended how he did. A slightly more subtle difference from the show, though, was how that ending reflects back on Childermass' shooting in the show. In the book, Lascelles was nowhere near it. I wonder how book!Lascelles would have seen his show counterpart's cowering during the shooting, in light of his views on cowardice there at the end? I don't think he'd take it well.
- I miss Stephen and Vinculus' more visceral connection from the show. I know that is largely because it struck me so strongly. I was probably always going to. I just really miss it in the book. I kept expecting them to click more, and they never really did.
- On the other hand, I see Vinculus/Childermass a LOT more in the book. Their whole first meeting is both funnier and warmer (sidenote: Childermass is also not the best at subterfuge here, Mr Unlikely Milliner, but he's so confident and cheerful about it that it doesn't matter), and they keep that warmth a lot more than in the show, even despite Childermass' much more overtly clinical treatment of Vinculus' body at the end (also again, honey, darling, carving yourself up is a bad idea, yes, so happy you figured that out, what's wrong with you? Pain bad, okay? Don't kill yourself). It's sort of blackly hilarious at the end, when Vinculus is silently and horrifyingly screaming after coming back to life, and Childermass dithers for a moment about calming spells before waving a bottle of wine in Vinculus' face instead. And it works. I like them, they're warmer and darkly funnier together in the book.
- Segundus and Childermass are also a lot funnier as well. The fact that the Hurtfew spell keeps following Segundus, so he actually can't remember Childermass a lot of the time. It's so funny (and kind of creepy cool, the way you realise what's happening, I really like magic sensed and worked around from Segundus' POV in the book). Also him thinking of Childermass as something out of a gothic novel, and Bad Fortune personified, The Ruin of Mr Segundus' Hopes and Dreams. And Childermass bluntly telling him to 'do the magic' at the end, so Mr Segundus does the magic. They're lovely.
- I have mentioned I love Mr Honeyfoot before, I think. Also Mrs Honeyfoot. They're just adorable, okay? Mr Honeyfoot is a sweet adorable honey bear of a man.
- Stephen and the Gentleman is a completely different kettle of fish in the book. Okay. I have to talk about this for a bit. It's really, really pronounced. Both of these characters just ... come across so differently, and their relationship as well.
The Gentleman is much, much more alien here. Maybe it's because of the context built in with the footnotes and his descriptions of other times and ways of life, but he so clearly does not have a human outlook at all, and genuinely doesn't get how creepy he's being. He's scarier, I think. In the show, a lot of what he does feels like malice, regardless of what he says about it, but in the book he just ... Those lives literally don't signify to him. It's not malice, he doesn't care enough about them to be malicious, it's just sheer objectification on his part. People are things. It's terrifying. He can be honestly trying to be nice, and still end up horrifying without even realising it.
Stephen, too, is also ... He's very different. People told me, but I didn't realise how much they were right. Book Stephen has so much more context and background. He feels a lot different. He's got more steel, but he's also much, much more bleak. There's a resignation that you don't get the same sense of in the show. He's also got a lot more ... you can sense how much he's internalised ideas about 'respectability' in the book, how it's armour for him against what his skin means. He clings to it very desperately, but he knows it's hopeless at the same time, which gets so viscerally shown when that man bumps into him in the street and panics, and we literally watch Stephen give up then and there. He knows that's all it takes. It's so incredibly bleak. He's ... he actually reminds me a lot of Norrell, which is not a comparison I ever thought I'd be making. But they do, they both have the same sense of holding to respectability as a shield against the chaos they know is out there, that they know they're helpless against, and the same sense of helplessness and constraint, the chafing of society's demands. It's just that Norrell is able to get himself a lot more power, and maybe consequently never developes the same amount of spine that Stephen has just breathing. There's even a certain amount of similarity in their endings, how they both find a certain freedom in Faerie, away from England, where 'respectability' gets sheared away and they're both left with a task that scares and pleases them (magic for Norrell, a kingdom to organise for Stephen). They're released, in a way. They're freed.
And Stephen and the Gentleman ... Again, very different. Show!Stephen felt like a mouse between a cat's paws, whereas book!Stephen is more like a man who's accidentally grabbed a tiger by the tail. It's still not going to end well, but there are moments where he can almost steer the monster he's grabbed hold of. You also get ... you can see why the Gentleman is attractive to him, at the same time he terrifies him. In contrast to pretty much the entirety of England, the Gentleman never has a single moment of doubt that Stephen is worthy. His idea of helping is terrifying, but there's no doubt that that is actually what he's trying to do. He loves Stephen, even if still in a pretty-plaything sort of way, since the Gentleman no more understands Stephen's thoughts and desires than he does any other human's. You can see why Stephen apologises on killing him. He's not killing his captor, he's killing someone he knows genuinely loved him as best he was able. It says a lot, though ... The run-up to that, what happened to Stephen's mother, his knowledge and despair of what Vinculus' death means for him ... All of England's magic flowers for him, he can avenge everything, every despair the system ever caused him, and he does think about it, but the second Lady Pole comes running out, his instinct is to preserve her. He kills a creature who loves him, because his instinct, regardless of his thoughts, is to save who he can. It says so much about him.
I wish he had a happier ending, though. It's not ... he's free, in a way, and a king, but the sense of bleakness is still there, and he does trade one duty for another. I want someone to hug him. Putting it bluntly. I want him to have someone who doesn't want anything, who won't think anything, who will just wrap their arms around him and let him feel. Let him grieve, let him rage, let him express his despair. I don't even care who. I just really, really badly want someone to hug Stephen.
I wouldn't say no to Mrs Brandy, actually. She was another unexpected delight of the book. Her oblique courtship of him was so sweet and cute before it all went tits up. I wouldn't mind if, somewhere in the aftermath, she finds herself being sweetly and shyly courted back by a damaged fairy king in desperate need of a woman of her calibre by his side. I mean this. I would not say no to that at all.
... I did say I had thoughts on Stephen Black, yes? Hehe. Um. Yeah. I want Stephen to be happy, okay? Both Stephens, as different as they are. I think Stephen/Vinculus(/Childermass) is still my show ship for him, while with the book Stephen/Gentleman in a terrifying sort of way and then maybe Stephen/Mrs Brandy in the aftermath are where I've ended up. I just ... someone be nice to the poor man, okay? Somebody take care of him, I need this very much. He's so crumpled in the show and so incredibly, appallingly bleak in the book. Help. Help now. Thank you.
Anyway! Overall thoughts, I liked the book very very much. I'm not at all sure how I'm going to manage fanfic from here on out, there are places in which the show and the book are VERY different, and there are bits of both that I prefer or don't prefer, and bits that I like equally but in very different ways. I'm not sure how and where I'm going to separate them out. But. I will manage, somehow or other. I have so much to digest right now.
The book is hilarious, though. Both bleaker and funnier than the show. I'm not sure I expected that. It's very blackly funny in places. Heh.
