This is a collection of short stories set in the same alternate history as Susanna Clarke's magnum opus "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell." If you haven't read that, what the hell are you doing? READ IT. It is better than nearly anything else. If you have read that already, I'd say read it a second time. You're going to get even more out of that second reading, especially if you get the audiobook read by Simon Prebble (who briefly returns here, they couldn't very well have the Duke of Wellington for a moment without his perfect voicing). If you have read it twice, go ahead and tackle this selection of short stories. You'll enjoy it and finish up wistfully wondering when she is going to publish another book.There are eight stories here, of which my favorite is definitely "The Duke of Wellington Misplaces His Horse." One of the best characters from the larger novel makes a brief journey into Wall and the Lands Beyond (the setting of Neil Gaiman's Stardust, previously reviewed). Wonderful story. After three years the others which I remember best are the title story, "Mr Simonelli, or the Fairy Widower" (a fictional diary entry from a man of dubious morality who has some fairy blood in him), and "Tom Brightwind, or How the Fairy Bridge was Built at Thoresby," a marvelous yarn about a Jewish doctor who builds a bridge with the help of a fairy companion.
Davina Porter is alright, but the stories she reads just didn't feel as right to me. Then Simon Prebble came on and I had nary a complaint, he is a total rockstar at reading English literature.
Clarke's postmodernist take on fantasy is here in spades, as is her penchant for irony and respect for the traditions of Dickens and Austen. The stories have less substance than the novel, but that is only to be expected, and they seem to me to contain a bit more whimsy and cleverness, perhaps a pinch of her friend Neil Gaiman's influence. Well worth the read, though it made me all the more impatient for her second novel.
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