Illustrated collection of stories about fairies, magic, and man set in and about Great Britain. Fun, whimsical and plenty cheeky. Clarke is a master of ye olde faerie tale. ( )

Story 1. The Ladies of Grace Adieu I thought was strange, I couldn’t comprehend it.
Story 2. On Lickerish Hill I thought was delightful and witty. Has some aspects of Rumplestiltskin by the Brothers Grimm about it , however, Clarke’s version is way more superior than theirs.
Story 3. Mrs. Mabb I thought was delightful and witty.
Story 4. The Duke of Wellington Misplaces His Horse is pathetic, silly and preposterous. Fortunately, it is only seven pages long.
Story 5. Mr. Simonelli is excellent. Wonderfully well-written.
Story 6. Tom Brightwiind is foolish, pointless and not very good.
Story 7. Anticks and Frets is a slight episode about Mary Queen of Scots.
Story 8. John Uskglass is another foolish story.

This collection covers a spectrum from the sublime to the ridiculous, from very excellent to really rather poor. There are three stories in the collection that shows Clarke to be an excellent writer, the characterisation is first class, and the stories are witty and delightful: On Lickerish Hill, Mrs. Mabb and Mr. Simonelli. The others are just tosh. Some stories I found to be incomprehensible or downright foolish and I resented a writer of her calibre foisting these stories on me as literature. Shame on you, Susanna, you naughty girl, don’t do it again!

So while I admired her skill in the good stories I was overall disappointed in this mixed bag, a bit like a grocer putting the rotten tomatoes underneath the good ones hoping you pay for them and all and not notice.

Clarke is a very good writer and I am looking forward to reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I think the longer form is better suited to her considerable talents.

My Recommendation:

Cons:

Susanna Clarke was ill-advised to put out this collection as 62,5% of it is frankly, not very good.

Pros:

Contains three excellent stories, read those and leave the filler. ( )

“Above all remember this: that magic belongs as much to the heart as to the head and everything which is done, should be done from love or joy or righteous anger. And if we honour this principle we shall discover that our magic is much greater than all the sum of all the spells that were ever taught.”

So begins The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories by Susanna Clarke. In some stories, she takes us straight into the world of Faerie, in others, along the borderlands where human and faerie live touching and yet a universe apart. Sometimes human and Faerie live in a strange symbiosis, seldom (but it does happen) in actual friendship. These faeries are not the sanitised Tinker Bell of Hollywood nor the twinkly sprites on greeting cards. These are the ancient Faerie of England: the Raven King, John Uskglass, Mrs. Mabb and company, who have nothing of human in their hearts, if indeed they have hearts, and access to an ancient, dark power.

The world of Faerie is in our world, around our world, separate from our world. You might walk through a gap in a hedge and there you would be. You might meet a man on a horse and find yourself with your dress torn to ribbons and no memory of how it happened. A bridge might appear in England and take you straight through to Italy.

Susanna Clarke has a fine gift for telling the tales of these fey folk, of their magic and its impact on the human world. For we humans who love to cross the borderlands into this complicated world of illusion, tricksy goings-on, with its dark hints of danger and perilous paths, this book is a little treasure. I would have loved it as a child and I love it as an adult. I'm glad I splashed out on the hardcover edition with its embossed pink cover which slides into the grey box. Delicious books deserve to be well bound.

If you are an empiricist, this won’t be for you. If you love what ifs and happenstances with onion layers of contradictions, happy reading.

Little drier than Swift & Norell. But still a nice read ( )

What a delectable cocktail peanut of a book. I wish it had been available before Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, because it would have made a perfect gateway drug to the longer, more intense, and more exhausting high of the Big One. But that's like complaining that you only won $10 million in the lottery..."oh shut up" is the best response.

Nine stories set in Miss Clarke's vastly improved nineteenth-century England, the one where magical beings are and the operations of magic happen to all the people. These operations aren't always pleasant, or even kind ("Mrs Mabb", "Antickes and Frets"); sometimes, though, the balance of justice gets a magical turbocharge with satisfying results ("Tom Brightwind or How the Fairy Bridge Was Built at Thoresby", "John Uskglass and the Cumbrian Charcoal Burner"); and for the rest? Sheer pleasure to read.

Clarke creates this magical England carefully, a term I use despite its connotations of grindhood and laborious tedium; the care, gratefully, is virtually invisible to the reader. It shows itself in the effortless naturalism of these clearly contra-natural stories. It is a sign of a master storyteller working at close to peak performance. One never thinks, "Oh c'mon!" about the antics of the magical characters, since they are provided with clear, though sometimes skewed, motives for their actions. It's a pleasure to meet John Uskglass and see his interaction with the mundane world in all its bilateral confusion and misunderstanding! Tom Brightwind and Dr. Montefiore are the classic mismatched buddies that I do honestly meet in real life; even though one is a fairy that doesn't change their dynamic.

The physical book, the hardcover edition that I have anyway, is as pleasurable to possess as the stories themselves are. The handsome cloth binding, stamped with Charles Voss's beautiful floral illustration, begins the pleasure; beautiful oxblood colored endsheets are rich, inviting, somewhat unsettlingly colored; then the line drawings within the text and the handsome, clear typography complete the impression of careful, thoughtful presentation of these delightful tales.

Anyone who quailed at the sheer massiveness of the tome Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell should read these stories, and understand that equal pleasures of a more sustained sort await between those widely separated covers. Anyone who simply loves good storytelling and good stories told should run and get this book. It's very much worth your time and money. ( )