THE INFURIATING JONATHAN STRANGE

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell continues to perplex. Susannah Clarke keeps dropping promising lines of narrative in order to introduce new, equally promising lines of narrative. People are spirited away by fairies and promptly forgotten about, to the point where one wonders whether they will be brought back, or if this is that most annoying of works, the unannounced first volume of a trilogy. This book is something like baseball, or war: stretches in which nothing much happens, punctuated by brilliant excitement. Social scientists tell us that random reinforcement is far more powerful than regular reinforcement, and that is what I, as a reader of this book, have fallen in thrall to. Damn it.