One of the Ladies, Mrs. Fields, has married not well. Her husband is, at best, and as she characterizes him, a tedious man. But Mrs. Field’s step-daughter Cassandra who is near to her own age becomes her best friend and together they meet Miss Tobias who is a guardian of two young children in a nearby estate. This happens at a time when Cassandra too is facing imminent, marital duty to a man as tedious as her father.
Not surprisingly the men who show up in Miss Tobias’ life are villainous. They rather openly hint about how wonderful it would be for the children to die so that the inheritance would come to them. Well, but at least neither proposes a marriage.
Luckily the Ladies have access to a library full of books about the wild, Olde Magicke and they seem to be quick studies. What Jonathan Strange finds is that women can be whatever they wish to be. In the case of the Ladies what they wish, what they become, in many ways is simply character development taken to extremes.
To my mind the best story in the collection is “On Lickerish Hill” which is written in an old dialect of antique English. At first, reading sentences that contain words spelled such as “replie,” and “sayz,” “wuz” and “doe” along with archaic sentence formations seems like a little too much work. But in almost all cases it is simply the spelling that is different and there are very few archaic words to, well, astonie anyone. In some books I heartily applaud the use of 
dialect; the novel CLOUD ATLAS by David Mitchell comes to mind for its various and futuristic slang as does RIDDLEY WALKER by Russel Hoban for its shattered post-nuclear war language. But I will grant to Clarke that her use of these antiquated spellings and construction has added to the atmosphere of the story. It is well worth getting into and reading along until the spellings become simple phonetics and no longer interrupt the flow of your inner voice.
dialect; the novel CLOUD ATLAS by David Mitchell comes to mind for its various and futuristic slang as does RIDDLEY WALKER by Russel Hoban for its shattered post-nuclear war language. But I will grant to Clarke that her use of these antiquated spellings and construction has added to the atmosphere of the story. It is well worth getting into and reading along until the spellings become simple phonetics and no longer interrupt the flow of your inner voice.One of Clarke’s most interesting parts of her sub-creation (as Tolkien would term her novel’s and short stories’ shared universe) is the dark and other-worldly character of the Faerie Realm’s denizens. These are not Tolkien’s noble elves, and certainly not Conan Doyle’s dancing fairies. No, they are capable of actions not just beyond belief but even beyond our full understanding. In the story “Tom Brightwind: How The Fairy Bridge Was Built At Thoresby” we meet both the eighteenth-century Jewish physician, David Montefiore and his sort-of-friend Tom Brightwind a Prince among the Fairies. How the two of them -- a Jew and a Fairy, so both not quite fitting in anywhere -- travel through English Society makes an interesting read.
The many illustrations by Charles Vess (one reproduced here) who is a World Fantasy Award winner for Art make this book as delightful in production values as in content. Everything you love in Susanna Clarke’s writings, if love them you do, may be found in this short but inviting collection.
THE LADIES OF GRACE ADIEU by Susanna Clarke is published by Bloomsbury USA. $23.95 Hardcover.
