Unsurprisingly, when I look back at my childhood the books that dominated are the Narnia books. It just was a world in which I felt completely at home. I think it wasn’t that I realized fantasy literature did something different perhaps from other literature I just felt more at home in Narnia and in other similar books perhaps historical books in some way that wasn’t the modern world. It just it made more sense to me. Then in in my teenage years I read Ursula LeGuin’s EarthSea series despite that being in in many ways a sort of archetypal fantasy with Wizards and Dragons it was it was so real and it gave me something which I was missing in my actual life…books like EarthSea sort of made a place for my emotion and made a place for my dreams and my intellect. I was at home there. I look to the to not so much to the architecture but to the landscape of some of those islands that make up EarthSea. I know that place. I feel I have walked there um I know it better than I know most places in the real world.
I feel that fantasy literature ― good fantasy literature ― gives meaning to the reader, the reader finds a world which is meaningful when so much of the world that we actually live in we feel, probably wrongly, but we feel is meaningless.
–Susanna Clarke, in conversation with Alan Moore, British Library
What booksellers are saying about The Wood at Midwinter
- This story is quietly beautiful, following a young girl who understands the things she gives her interests to do not align with those around her. Yet, she continues to pursue them anyway. Questions of sainthood, trees that know more than we can possibly imagine, and nods to the Virgin Mary. What I loved most was the way Clarke’s author’s note gives so much context and depth to the origins of the story, making us think about the stories we tell and what they teach us about existing in the world. Beautifully done.
― Morgan DePerno, Bookmarks, Winston-Salem, North Carolina | BUY
- What a beautiful little novella. I’m ready to run away and live in the woods.
― Lily Wilson, Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, North Carolina | BUY
- Super amazing novella that I was able to enjoy in one sitting, which is how I imagine this story is meant to be enjoyed. The illustrations are beautiful and the afterword from Clarke is amazing. I also agree that books should have more trees and pigs!
― Kait Boyd, The Haunted Book Shop in Mobile, Alabama | BUY
About Susanna Clarke
Susanna Clarke is the author of Piranesi, which won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Hugo Award–winning Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories. She lives in England.
