Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

by Susanna Clarke

We bring ourselves to books. Who we are. Who we believe ourselves to be. Our personal history, our experiences, our needs, our wants, our biases. We pack all of it on our person. We carry it with us, like a satchel, on our journey into fiction. Sometimes, it helps us on the road. Other times, it weighs us down. Holds us back. As writers, it is the part we can never account for—the fact that each and every reader who stumbles on our work carries their own world, their own mind. We know that the right reader might find our work at the wrong time. That for some, there will never be a right time; they are on a different journey. But there is another category of reader: the reluctant one. The one who comes to the work, but does so cautiously, already half-convinced that it won’t be to their liking. Their satchel, laden with suspicion. Perhaps they do not like long books. Or historical ones. Or footnotes. These readers often come, expecting to be proven right that the book is not for them. And sometimes, to the delight of the author and audience alike, they are proven wrong.

In familiar surroundings our manners are cheerful and easy, but only transport us to places where we know no one and no one knows us, and Lord! how uncomfortable we become!

Upon my word, there is nothing in the world so easy to explain as failure – it is, after all, what every body does all the time.”

“He has not studied the subject at all, but has managed to devise a great many theories about it. I meet with that sort very often.

“As far as neighbours go, those trees are quite exemplary. They mind their own affairs and have never troubled me. I rather think that I will return the compliment.”

She said, “I know you do not put a great deal of faith in what men can do, but …” “I put no faith in them at all,” interrupted the unknown woman. “I know what it is to waste years and years upon vain hopes of help from this person or that. No hope at all is better than ceaseless disappointment!”