Susanna Clark... They crowned her one of the greatest novelists of her generation, and then she disappeared
Susanna Clark… They crowned her one of the greatest novelists of her generation, and then she disappeared
Twenty years ago, an editor at Bloomsbury Publishing took a huge risk on a very unusual book. It is Susanna Clarke's first fantasy novel, set in nineteenth-century England, and tells the story of two feuding magicians trying to revive the lost arts of English magic. The incomplete manuscript was filled with complicated footnotes that in some cases resembled an academic treatise on the history and theory of magic. The book's author, Susanna Clark, was a cookbook editor who wrote fantasy novels in her spare time.
“Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell” immediately launched Susanna Clarke as one of the greatest novelists of her generation. Critics placed it on a par with C. S. Lewis and J. Ar. Ar. Tolkien, and some have compared her sly wit and keen social observations to those of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen. Readers devoured the novel, which sold more than four million copies.
“I have never read anything like Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell in my life,” says Alexandra Pringle, a former editor at Bloomsbury, which commissioned a first printing of 250,000 copies. “The way she created a world separate from ours but completely rooted in it was completely convincing and drawn with great precision and sensitivity.”
The novel recreated scenes that blurred the boundaries with fantasy, making it longlisted for the Booker Prize and winning the Hugo Award, a major award for science fiction and fantasy. Because of the success of the novel, it organized tours across the United States and Europe, and Bloomsbury House later awarded her a huge contract for a second novel.
Then Clarke disappeared as suddenly as she appeared. Shortly after the novel's release, Clarke and her husband were having dinner with friends near their home in Derbyshire, England. In the middle of the evening, Clark felt nauseous and groggy, got up from the table, and collapsed.
In the following years, Clark struggled to write. The symptoms you were experiencing were; Migraines, fatigue, sensitivity to delicate, and fogginess have made working for long periods impossible. I wrote scattered fragments that were completely incoherent. Sometimes she couldn't finish a single sentence. At her lowest point, she was bedridden and depressed.
Clarke stopped considering herself a writer.
We say: “I was later diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. My disbelief that I couldn't write anymore became a real problem. I didn't think that was possible. “I just imagined myself as a sick woman.”
Now, two decades after her first appearance, Clarke returns to the magical world of Strange and Norrell. Her latest work, The Woods in Midwinter, focuses on a mysterious teenage woman who can talk to animals and trees and disappears into the woods. Spanning just 60 illustrated pages, the novel feels frugal and deceptively uncomplicated, like a children's story. But it is also a glimpse into a opulent imaginary world that Clarke has not stopped thinking about since she wrote “Strange and Norrell.”
The story Clarke tells in “The Woods in Midwinter” is part of her up-to-date novel in the works, which takes place in contemporary Newcastle, which serves as the capital of the Raven King, the powerful and mysterious wizard whom Clarke described as “part of my subconscious.” She is reluctant to say more about the novel she is working on, and wary of raising expectations. “I don’t know if I will be able to keep all these implicit promises,” she said. “The biggest thing I'm struggling with right now is how much energy will I have to write today.”
Clarke writes in the manner of a “crow” that collects shiny things. Pictures and scenes arrive without warning. Clark writes down the scattered fragments, then brings them together into a narrative, or several narratives. “She always has dozens of books in her head,” says Collin Greenland, a science fiction and fantasy writer and Clark's husband.
When reading her novels, the reader often feels as if he is seeing a petite part of a much larger world. Even Clarke herself is sometimes unsure about the stories she has written that exist only in her imagination.
She says in a puzzled voice: “I don’t remember what I put in (Strange and Norrell) and what I didn’t put. I like stories that seem like the background to another story, as if there is a different story behind this story, and we see just glimpses of that story.” “In a way, 'Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell' is a backdrop to another story, but I can't say I know exactly what that other story is.”
In conversation, Clarke, who is 64 and has low, glossy white hair, is sitting in the living room of her cozy stone cottage, where she and Mr. Greenland have lived for nearly 20 years.
Their house is located on the main stretch of a petite village in the Peak District of Derbyshire, a few steps from a petite stone-built church, and a low walk from the village pub which they sometimes visit. The tranquility of the countryside – where the silence of an autumn day is broken only by the chirping of birds and the occasional bleating of sheep – helps Clark channel any energy she can muster into writing.
On a slightly gray, damp September day, Clarke was feeling rather unwell, and had her feet up on the brown leather sofa; The place where you write most mornings. She was holding a stuffed pig in her lap, with a stuffed fox next to her; Each of these creatures plays a role in the novel “The Woods in Midwinter.” She likes to hold her stuffed animals while working, to lend a hand her think, and as a talisman “to ward off something I don't know what it is.” Some people do things like children, and then as they grow older, they give up the childish things. “I'm not very good at it.”
She looked at the pig and added: “I don't really see the point in getting old.”
Then she added: “The biggest thing I worry about is how much energy will I need to write today?”
Born in Nottingham in 1959, Susannah Clarke had an unstable childhood, as her father, a Christian minister, changed churches every few years, and her family moved between northern England and Scotland. In their Protestant home, displays of emotion were undesirable; So Clark, the eldest of three children, was raised to believe that piety meant that “you're not supposed to do anything in your life that makes you special,” she says.
*Service: “The New York Times”
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