The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories

The title story is by far the best and most satisfying. The others are enjoyable, too. ( )

I loved the dry humour of Clarke's tales, as sharp on one side as her dark, grotesque menace is on the other. It was pleasing to see her reference to Sylvia Townsend Warner's Kingdoms of Elfin, as that book is a definite predecessor of Clarke's conception of fairy.

One story which seemed very familiar as I was reading it was revealed as a retelling of the folktale "Tom Tit Tot", which sent me to Katherine Briggs's wonderful A Dictionary of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies and Other Supernatural Creatures to re-read the original.

The final story had hints of The Mabinogion tales crossed with J.R.R. Tolkien's Farmer Giles of Ham, and was a nicely humorous sign-off.

While the Austenesque flavour of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is much in evidence, especially in the title story in which Strange appears (and I'd happily read a novel about the Three Ladies), there is a well-judged diversity in tone and style between the stories.

If I've emphasised the similarities with other authors' works, that's not to suggest Clarke is derivative, rather that, as in Piranesi, she is skilful at unpicking the threads those others have woven and of reworking them into her own tapestry.

This is a tough one for me. My rating through this collection of stories pinged from exuberant fives to dismal ones.

Make no mistake, Susanna Clarke can write, and her first novel, [book:Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell|14201] was a damn tour de force.

Which is why this one's tough. Each story is very much a massively condensed version of that novel, many of them taking place in the same world. And while each is meticulously written, often laugh out loud funny, and occasionally poignant, still there were sections that were dreadfully dull that were a slog to get through.

Overall, I'd say the effort's worth it, as I believe each story, while never delivering a big ending, did offer closure.

Susanna Clarke writes like the great great great grandmother of the lovechild of [author:Neil Gaiman|1221698] and [author:J.K. Rowling|1077326], and that's not a bad thing, because she does a great job of capturing the wonder the both those authors deliver on. I guess what I'm saying is, there are times I wish she'd move the time and place of her stories forward a couple hundred years. I'd love to see what she could do with the 21st century, instead of sticking firmly in the 19th. ( )

(Note: This review originally appeared as part of a series of capsule reviews of illustrated novels, hence the focus on the art)

Clarke’s second book was better served in the illustration and design departments
than Jonathan Strange. The Ladies of Grace Adieu is bound with embossed,
printed cloth boards, and is delicately illustrated by Charles Vess, a veteran artist
who specializes in a sort of wistful, arcane drawing in the vein of Arthur
Rackham and others from the “Golden Age of Illustration” at the turn of the last
century. His dark, fantastical images are an excellent complement to Clarke’s
prose. While I do like to see more tension between the style of the prose and the
illustrations, sometimes it is the right choice to create a seamless collaboration
such as this one. ( )

I had a really challenging time reading Clarke's first novel, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel, but once I had acclimatized to her writing style and got into the story (after three tries) I quite enjoyed it. I knew what I was in for this time around, so it was practically effortless getting caught up in this collection of stories. Each explores a case a magical happenings during Clarke's alternate Victorian era, so we get a range of characters and adventures that is more varied than in the lengthy narrative of Strange and Norrel. Many of the stories also feature female characters and magicians prominently, so we get away from the political and military aspects that seem to dominate the male magicians of the day. Poor men, it seems, as the sorceresses surely have more fun with their conjuring, shapeshifting, and general trickery. The men may try to keep them in bounds (in typical Victorian fashion), but as the ladies of Grace Adieu state when faced with the (all be it soft) wrath of Jonathan Strange: "you cannot even reconcile what you believe in your heart to be true and what we are obliged to write in the quarterly reviews" and to not return to challenge them until he has figured himself out. He may be the second greatest magicianof the age, but he is no match for women who know themselves and who know their power! ( )