9 June, 2002
Sorcery and Cecelia
Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer
1988
197 pp (MMPB)
This book is set in 1817, in an alternate world where magic is real. Everything else is pretty much the same as in our 1817. Kate Rushton, a young lady of marriageable age, has gone to London for her first society Season. Her best friend and cousin Cecelia has to stay behind in Essex. The cousins maintain a regular correspondence, and their letters to one another form the text of the novel.
Adventure ensues when Kate attends an acquaintance's investiture into the Royal College of Wizards. She accidentally stumbles into a small garden, where a woman tries to poison her, thinking she is the mysterious Marquis of Schofield in disguise. Naturally, it's not long before the Marquis himself makes an appearance. Meanwhile, Cecelia discovers an Essex connection to the Marquis and his conflict with the woman who tried to poison Kate.
Sorcery and Cecelia is pure fun. The plot is somewhat formulaic in its general form, but the particulars include enough twists to keep it interesting. The characters are likeable, especially Kate and Cecelia, who are smart, resourceful, and delightfully mischievous. The narrative voice (voices, actually) is wonderful. One of the things I enjoy in a book is a strong, distinctive narrative voice, and Sorcery and Cecelia delivers on that.
Dearest Kate,
It is dreadfully flat here since you have been gone, and it only makes it worse to imagine all the things I shall be missing. I wish Aunt Elizabeth were not so set against my having a Season this year. She is still annoyed about the incident with the goat, and says that to let the pair of us loose on London would ruin us both for good, and spoil Georgy's chances into the bargain. I think this is quite unjust, but there is no persuading her. (I believe the fact that she would have been obliged to share a house with Aunt Charlotte, should she and I have come to London this year, may have contributed to her decision.)
I have one piddley little nitpick, which would be silly to bring up, except that it bugged me throughout the book. The characters-- members of the English gentry during the early 1800s-- use one another's given names entirely too often than is period-appropriate. This books takes place around the time Jane Austen was writing, and back then, everybody was "Miss Bennett" or "Mr. Darcy," except among family and intimate friends of the same sex (and not always then). In Sorcery and Cecelia it's all "Thomas" and "James" and "Miranda." It's a minor quibble, and justified by the fact that this is an alternate universe, after all, but I found it distracting.
P.S. Thanks to Jamie Bowden for giving me a copy of this (hard-to-find) book!