The Unreliable Narrator is originally from Northamptonshire and has lived in Penarth for almost five years. They will be writing a book review for Penarth Nub News every Saturday, whether it's based on a treasure found in a second-hand book shop or a glossy hardback from Griffin Books.

"The wonder of the bookcases was nothing to the wonder of the books." – Susanna Clarke.

I envy my husband, who has read so few books in his adult life that he has instant recall of those he has. I cannot say the same of myself. I know I have read books, but I would fail to recall a single plot point if pushed.

This is one of them. My sister had the book and therefore I will have stolen it, damaged its spine (weighing in at a hefty 1,006 pages after all) and guiltily attempted to return it to the bookshelf without it being noticed. Not an easy feat.

The novel is so large that I can only read it, even now, propped up against a desk, a table, my folded legs. I dread to think of the state I will have returned it in.

I picked this copy up last week in a book exchange by the pier and it weighed me down the entire walk home. Suffice to say, it is not yet finished; my consumption is a work in progress. However, it will not be rushed. This is a book to delight in.

Set in the early 1800s, the novel opens with a question: why is there no more magic performed in England? And so we begin. Diving into a night, pulling up a chair to a dimly lit fireside, fumbling for a light; the avid historical reader in me cannot help but be gleeful with every footnote that Clarke so ingeniously inserted into the text, helping me to suspend my disbelief further.

This novel is exhilarating. I do not doubt that, with her authorly authority, Clarke, master of the dark arts, could convince anyone, even just for the moment that the book lays open, that this parallel history truly did occur.

I am not a reader of fantasy; it is the one genre (that and science fiction) that I cannot abide by. I like a novel to be grounded in the roots of the real world; I find make-believe and magic and demons too distracting, too obviously a construct, a device for speaking of the things that we do not wish to confront, head-on, in our world. But I am a reader of her work.

Clarke's skill as an author, as an architect of alternative universes, is so deft as to be almost a sleight of hand. This novel, clearly so carefully plotted, is so captivating that you do not see the cogs of her mind turning, although they must have been furiously whirring as she put pen to page.

However, it is with regret that I must say that, with a few hundred pages yet to turn, this review is to be continued. I am counting down the hours until my progress can resume.