While it hasn’t been getting as much attention as her wonderful first novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Sussana Clarke’s latest work, a book of short stories set in that same world is equally as rivetting and perhaps more accessible to those who shuddered at the size and studied language of the tome that is Norrell. While less overtly disturbing than much of what greets us in the novel, The Ladies of Grace adieu and other stories, reminds us constantly that the whimsical world is a dark one and that magic is never a casual creature, even in worlds where it is ordinary.
