What a journey! I don’t know what I was thinking waiting this long to read this novel. It’s been sitting on my bookshelf for almost 10 months and has been out for over a decade! In the last few months I finally heard enough about Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell to pick it up and read the tome that it is. (AKA the boyfriend wants to watch the new TV adaptation and I said I couldn’t until I read the book.)
I am most definitely beating myself up for not reading it sooner. Sure I was a bit scared of the length, hello doorstop clocking in at 846 pages, but I was even more concerned with the comparisons to Dickens! How wrong I was; how wrong I was. For some reason I let this one comparison (I still think Dickens needed an editor) blind me from the wondrousness that was this book.
This book ended better than it started, but wasn’t at all what I wanted. I hate having to write that, but it’s the truth! Even as I’m writing this I realize I’ll probably drop it from a three star to a two star rating on Goodreads when I post this, but I’m not sure – it’s probably a two-and-a-half star book. I was honestly relieved to see this was Wyler’s first novel as she shows a lot of potential and clearly I thought the story was an excellent creation, just the writing (or editing) needed a lot of work.
Unlike Dickens, I could read Wilkie Collins ALL DAY. There are those of you out there that will find this shocking, but it’s the truth. This is the first novel I’ve read by Collins and I am VERY glad I added it to my Classics Club list! In addition it counted as a bonus book for my Tea & Books reading challenge coming in at just over 750 pages (according to Goodreads).