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  3. What kind of magic can make an 800-page novel seem too short? Whatever it is, debut author Susanna Clarke is possessed by it, an

What kind of magic can make an 800-page novel seem too short? Whatever it is, debut author Susanna Clarke is possessed by it, an

admin2010-05-14  31
问题    What kind of magic can make an 800-page novel seem too short? Whatever it is, debut author Susanna Clarke is possessed by it, and her astonished readers will surely hope she never recovers. Her epic history of an alternative, magical England is so beautifully realized that not one of the many enchantments Clarke chronicles in the book could ever be as potent or as quickening as her own magnificent narrative.
   It is 1806, and Gilbert Norrell is the only true magician in England. He sets out to restore the practice of magic to a nation that has not seen it for more than 300 years. But there is an odd and fateful twist to Norrell’s character: he is as scholarly and insufferably pedantic as he is gifted. In short, Norrell is the most boring and unmagical person imaginable. This is Clarke’s masterstroke, the necessary touch of ordinary candleshine in the midst of all the uncanny fairy light she dispenses.
   Enter Jonathan Strange, the intuitive magician--the natural-- who can improvise in a flash what Norrell has gleaned from long study. Strange becomes Norrell’s pupil, but soon the tension between their styles mounts to a breaking point. The two men realize that they have a fundamental disagreement about how to approach the mysterious and terrifying sources of English magic, in the face of which even Albus Dumbledore might find himself unnerved.
   Just as Norrell and Strange apprentice themselves to a Golden Age of medieval magicians, Clarke tethers her craft to the great 19th-century English masters of the novel, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. The book offers not only an Austen-like. inquiry into the fine human line between ridiculous flaw and serious consequence, but also a Dickensian flow of language in which a comical surplus of detail rings at last with certain and inevitable significance.
   This elixir of literary influences gives the story its delightful texture. But there is so much more to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell an energy buckling and straining at the edges of the book in sheer imaginative overflow, just as the realm of Faerie buckles and strains beyond the edges of England’s green fields, beckoning us down the overgrown path and through the dark wood.
   Thus it happens that a novel of 800 pages seems far too short. This is the strangest--and, as we gratefully come to understand, the "norrellest"--magic a book lover could wish for.
The magic that makes Susanna Clarke’s lengthy book seem too short may consist of all the following EXCEPT______.
选项 A、Clarke’s imaginative surfeit of energy
B、Clarke’s Dickensian flow of language
C、Clarke’s ability to present magnificent narratives
D、Clarke’s masterstroke in describing Norrell’s character
答案A
解析 Clarke的魔力显然包括选项B，C，D所指(第四、一、二段分别有提示)。但第五段中提及的energy明显与选项A中的意思有别。
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