f late, Gentle Reader, you will note that my reading diet consists chiefly of two kinds: those such titles as penned by Lovecraft, Leguin, Pratchett, and those concerned with issues of faith in this our present age of postmodernity. Fiction and non-fiction, broadly speaking; more specifically, fantasy narrative and spiritual contemplation. Story undergirds both, and in both, it serves to convey the reader from a place of confinement (of dreary everyday necessity, or of religious deadends) into a liberation of the imagination and the heart. An unkindly eye would dismiss both as escapism, no doubt.

And such a criticism would be met with the contempt it deserves from yours truly. What is more to the point regarding my reading these recent months is that there is no "serious" fiction among the stacks at my bed-table. Certainly, Lovecraft is considered the inheritor of Poe in his emphasis on the macabre and the otherworldly; likewise, LeGuin has garnered praise and awards for the application of political and social ideas in her books; and there are few who can match the inventive humor and linguistic chicanery of Pratchett. But, respectively and with all due respect, Lovecraft was a hack, LeGuin a niche writer, and Pratchett is out for a laugh. None of them really transcend the genres in which they excel.

Ms. Clarke's fantastical novel

Which should not suggest that I rate them as inferior reads (excepting Lovecraft, I think). It is just that as one who has been schooled in some of the formative serious fiction of the modern era, I find little in these authors to match the subtlety of an Austen, the wit of a Fielding. Not that I minded this much; the absence of such works seemed to suggest the futility of their undertaking.

Until now. Susanna Clarke's recently published novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell has in effect kicked the doors down of both historical fiction and fantasy in one motion, and it unites both in a book that, were Ian Watt tricked into reading it 60 years ago as a successor to Austen, would have most certainly found its way into that grand early literary history, The Rise of the Novel. Not that Watt is still regarded as the authority on the subject, but he did tell a good story. Ms. Clarke's novel would very easily serve as an interpolation to that story.

It reads like a novel of the era in which it is set: pre-1820 England. Thus, if you have been fortunate enough to enjoy Austen, Radcliffe, Sterne, or Fielding, you will feel right at home in narrative. Except, of course, that the story is about an England where magic was real, and where two men--the title characters--try by their respective means and temperaments to revive English magic: something they view essentially as a union of English "arts and arms."

The book's narrator uses a version of free indirect discourse (think third-person omniscient narrator with an opinion of his/her own), and the narrative is fastidiously documented and footnoted with all manner of anecdotal backstory. The scope is large, yet the focus often on drawing rooms and libraries, to the accompanyment of a roaring fireplace. Terrifically fun, deliciously mysterious, and an overall thumping good read. Do not miss this one, Gentle Readers.