zenithblue | The Ladies of Grace Adieu (Reply)

A few years ago I read a review of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell that praised the book but ended up dismissing it as "nothing more than a confection." I chafed at the description. First off, it grated on me that someone would dismiss the sheer amount of research, work, and craft that went into a book just because its ultimate function was that of escape. To read Strange and Norrell is to be awed by the completeness of the setting, to marvel at the way Clarke captures the idiom of Regency England and cleverly manipulates it. By the end of the novel I was having a hard time remembering that there was no "history of English magic" or Raven King. Clarke has an attention to detail that is astounding. And in spite of the fact that this is a fantasy novel, an escape, Clarke, with a wit as subtle and excoriating as Jane Austen's, toys with class, race, and gender with great insight. Just because she does so in a book that also includes fairies does not mean the book is frivolous.

To disregard something as potentially powerful as escapism is to misunderstand it. At its best, escape can be as vital or redemptive as anything else we look for in literature.

In any case, I tell you this by way of apology, because I'm about to call Clarke's new volume of short stories, The Ladies of Grace Adieu, a confection. But I mean it in the best sense of the word.

Actually, it's probably more accurate to call the stories morsels. They're tasty, they're small, and while they haven't a heavy substance to them, they are certainly more sustaining than something like cotton candy or bon bons. This is probably due mostly to the fact that they are short. With Strange and Norrell, she was able to create a solid, engrossing fantasy, almost tangible enough to touch (and cleverly written in the style of a pseudo-history, pseudo-domestic novel, with syntax circa 1812). This collection of short pieces is set up in the same world but with a different frame; a fictional editor introduces the stories and represents them to us as historical or folklore-influenced tales of fairy coming into contact with man. There's a metafictional quality--you never feel like you're reading from the same authorial authority represented, say, in Strange and Norrell (the exception being the first story, which describes an encounter between Strange himself and a small informal coven). Rather the book is like a primer or collection that Strange or Norrell himself could read. As a result, they feel a bit like enjoyable morsels--fairy tales in the most sincere sense of the word.

This morsel quality doesn't mean that the stories lack intelligence. One of the delights for me in these fairy tales is how astutely Clarke deals with outsiders. In "The Ladies of Grace Adeiu," Jonathan Strange gets a glimpse of a much more wild, untamed magic in his interactions with three seemingly proper young ladies. Anyone who wondered what the womenfolk were doing while magic returned to England can rest assured that the question is here answered. Other stories, like "Mrs. Mabb" and "On Lickerish Hill" also show women navigating the perilous and bizarre world of Fairy (the Duke of Wellington has much less success, in "The Duke of Wellington Misplaces his Horse"). Then, too, one of the better stories of the collection follows the friendship between a powerful fairy prince and a expatriate Jew in England. The two have more in common than you'd think. Like Stephen Black in the novel, these clever outsiders are somehow appealing to fairies (most likely because they lack the smugness and complacency of the landed gentry).

That said, the majority of the stories do feel similar to one another, and you can see that she enjoys playing with the tropes of fairy stories in a way similar to Neil Gaiman (another writer whose short things feel like enjoyable bagatelle when compared to his longer stuff). Powerful fairy does something crazy and strange, clever mortal comes into contact with it, usually thwarts it in the end through cleverness (or luck). I enjoy fairy tales myself, and so I was entertained. But it would be interesting to see her use a similar framework and take more risks--fairies are dangerous, and narratives should be.

All things considered a pleasant, finely crafted read.