PositiveThe New York TimesClarke's imagination is prodigious, her pacing is masterly and she knows how to employ dry humor in the service of majesty ... With a cheery tone, Clarke welcomes herself into an exalted company of British writers — not only, some might argue, Dickens and Austen, but also the fantasy legends Kenneth Grahame and George MacDonald — as well as contemporary writers like Susan Cooper and Philip Pullman ...prose can be rummy and startling, though a reader must put up with the occasional trope evoking the authorial style of other times... Impressive as magicians, neither Mr. Strange nor Mr. Norrell are particularly appealing people; they both seem like sidekicks out of Dickens, promoted onto a central stage before they've had the chance to develop as prime-time players ... In this fantasy, the master that magic serves is reverence for writing.
Leo Braudy
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewWhat a dizzying array of approaches he commands — theological, historical, cultural, aesthetic and psychological. All but the downright molecular. Braudy explores the genuinely creepy and unsettling aspects of the liminal as embodied by a human or humanoid figure ... Though these definitions are de facto porous and at times overlapping, Braudy is deft and comprehensive, a veritable Linnaeus of the underworldly oversoul ... If this scholar writes densely, he also has a kangaroo capacity for crossing huge distances at a bound, moving with equal zest and confidence among biblical, classical, medieval, Enlightenment and Hollywood figures and conceits ... Braudy lays out a mosaic of pieces to instruct and, yes, delight us, but which particular piece might remain to bedevil a solitary reader when the book is closed — ah, in the unspeakable answer to such a private question lies the truth of being haunted. We never know what can get to us until it happens.
Samantha Hunt
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewI’ve dog-eared so many pages in honor of vivid prose...Hypnotic and glowing, Mr. Splitfoot insists on its own ghostly presence. Memory, either of dead people or of books read once upon a time, obeys only the rules it chooses.
