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A review by bootrat
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Did not finish book. Stopped at 14%.
I got about 15% of the way into this book, and was considering DNFing it because it was too slow and boring for me. But then I read this passage and decided nope, I'm absolutely not finishing a book that wrote something like this in 2004.
"He had a servant, a very small man no bigger than an eight-year-old child, and as dark as a European can be. He looked as if he had been put into the oven and baked for too long and was now rather overdone. His skin was the colour of a coffee-bean and the texture of a dried-up rice-pudding. His hair was black, twisted and greasy like the spines and quills you may observe on the less succulent parts of roasted chickens. His name was Perroquet (which means parrot). Admiral Desmoulins was very proud of Perroquet; proud of his size, proud of his cleverness, proud of his agility and most of all, proud of his colour. Admiral Desmoulins often boasted that he had seen blacks who would appear fair next to Perroquet."
Absolutely wild that this was thought to be ok just 20 years ago, but no way I'm finishing this racist shit. There's a very real difference between having your characters in 1807 be racist "(like the boasting comment from the Admiral) and writing extremely racist and unnecessary descriptions yourself as an author.
Also, I hated that this book had footnotes?? Like if you're having to throw footnotes in at the end of the chapters of a fantasy novel then your novel isn't doing enough to explain things through the plot and the prose. And reading this as an ebook made footnotes even more insufferable as I couldn't flick back easily to understand what the hell each footnote was referencing. Just so unnecessary.
"He had a servant, a very small man no bigger than an eight-year-old child, and as dark as a European can be. He looked as if he had been put into the oven and baked for too long and was now rather overdone. His skin was the colour of a coffee-bean and the texture of a dried-up rice-pudding. His hair was black, twisted and greasy like the spines and quills you may observe on the less succulent parts of roasted chickens. His name was Perroquet (which means parrot). Admiral Desmoulins was very proud of Perroquet; proud of his size, proud of his cleverness, proud of his agility and most of all, proud of his colour. Admiral Desmoulins often boasted that he had seen blacks who would appear fair next to Perroquet."
Absolutely wild that this was thought to be ok just 20 years ago, but no way I'm finishing this racist shit. There's a very real difference between having your characters in 1807 be racist "(like the boasting comment from the Admiral) and writing extremely racist and unnecessary descriptions yourself as an author.
Also, I hated that this book had footnotes?? Like if you're having to throw footnotes in at the end of the chapters of a fantasy novel then your novel isn't doing enough to explain things through the plot and the prose. And reading this as an ebook made footnotes even more insufferable as I couldn't flick back easily to understand what the hell each footnote was referencing. Just so unnecessary.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism