Happy Birthday: Susanna Mary Clarke (born 1 November 1959) is an English author best known for her debut novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004), a Hugo Award-winning alternative history. Clarke began Jonathan Strange in 1993 and worked on it during her spare time. For the next decade, she published short stories from the Strange universe, but it was not until 2003 that Bloomsbury bought her manuscript and began work on its publication. The novel became a best-seller.
Two years later, she published a collection of her short stories, The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories (2006). Both Clarke's debut novel and her short stories are set in a magical England and written in a pastiche of the styles of 19th-century writers such as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. While Strange focuses on the relationship of two men, Jonathan Strange and Gilbert Norrell, the stories in Ladies focus on the power women gain through magic.
Clarke's second novel, Piranesi, was published in September 2020, winning the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction.
In January 2024, she stated that she was currently working on a novel set in Bradford, England.
5 comments:
Interesting. I never thought I would like Jonathan Strange but I really did. Should I read her next book?
It was a LONG read for me - only evenings & weekends (as it was FAR too big to lug into work each day!) - but I was surprised too by how much I liked it. I don't have anything else by her so can only assume that her other works are quality reads too.
I do the same with my large books. I always carry one around with me whenever I leave the house but never a large one, so it takes me a lot longer than reading a shorter one. But that doesn't matter. As long as I like it, I don't care how long it takes me, especially since I always have about half a dozen on the go.
TWO at a time is my usual maximum - a novel & a non-fiction. But I can read two non-fiction at the same time if the subjects don't conflict too much.
We all read at the pace that suits us best. I like reading all kinds of different books at the same time, so that way I don't get bored.
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