Mr Norrell and Jonathan Strange

Blimey, I'm about 50 pages from the end of one of the longest books I can ever remember reading. Its an odd story set in the early nineteenth century whereupon two magicians battle it out over the best way to return magic to England. At 782 pages, it is longer than the fattest of the Harry Potters (and has much smaller print!)

But what makes it stand out is the author's use of postscripts. Almost every page has one, and in even tinier print. Many of them take up far more of the page than the actual story, and even take up two and even three pages. One memorable page had six of them. Now I don't mind a postscript, perhaps a reference or bit of extra information that would otherwise have broken the flow of the story. In this book, the postscripts occupy a whole extra novel and must account for a third of the page count, and at times rendered the book unreadable - one aside about the Raven King wrapped around three pages, and by the time I returned to the main story I had to reread a couple of pages to remind myself what was going on. Quite extraordinary! And no wonder the author looks so grumpy...

Good book, though.