The Eyre Affair

by Jasper Fforde
374 pages
Publisher: Penguin

ISBN: 0613629019

Library Thing Info

About 3 or 4 weeks ago I finished this book. YES, that long ago, and I am only writing the review now. Sometimes I forget. I have managed to read almost another 3 books since then.

Summary

The scene: Great Britain circa 1985, but a Great Britain where literature has a prominent place in everyday life. For pennies, corner Will-Speak machines will quote Shakespeare; Richard III is performed with audience participation a la Rocky Horror and children swap Henry Fielding bubble-gum cards. In this world where high lit matters, Special Operative Thursday Next (literary detective) seeks to retrieve the stolen manuscript of Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit. The evil Acheron Hades has plans for it: after kidnapping Next’s mad-scientist uncle, Mycroft, and commandeering Mycroft’s invention, the Prose Portal, which enables people to cross into a literary text, he sends a minion into Chuzzlewit to seize and kill a minor character, thus forever changing the novel. Worse is to come. When the manuscript of Jane Eyre, Next’s favorite novel, disappears, and Jane herself is spirited out of the book, Next must pursue Hades inside Charlotte Bronte’s masterpiece.

Borrowed from Publisher’s weekly review at Amazon.com

Opinion

This book falls into the genre bending category that I like, think something like Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett, not quite as comical as the previous but based on an England in 1985. It is also a first book and quite impressive amount of juggling for a first time author, Jasper Fforde.

Jasper Fforde looking suave

The book is a very enjoyable read. I know that sounds like a throw away comment but the literary references, the comic nature of some of the characters (without being silly), and the general use of wordplay actually make the book quite pleasurable to read.

The book has some fits that start and stop and the title would suggest that the Jane Eyre factor plays into it through the entire book, but in reality it is the last 1/4 of the book and as a result the book has some starts and stops at times. When it did get into the swing of one of the plot runs, it worked well. The connecting points are a bit raw at times. The author r expects some things of the readers, first is a complete suspension of belief. With his clever wit and fun wordplay, it is not too difficult.

If I had read some of the classics the book focuses on, I bet I would have found more and more things to speak to, but I have not. I actually think that shows the strength since I have not read Jane Eyre or Richard III or Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit and still found it enjoyable and the literary escapades comical and clever.

The main character, Thursday Next, is an interesting blend of Nancy Drew, Dirty Harry and Bridget Jones. And all of those work together somehow!! The lead baddie, Acheron Hades, is very over the top and does all sorts of Bond bad-guy monologues but it works as the premise is over the top to begin with. And of course, Acheron Hades has a brother named Styx.

I have 4 of the Thursday Next books at home (thanks Bookmooch!) and only need book 4, Something Rotten, to have the whole set. It is a nice well written escapism and would be better for the well-read because of the internal jokes going on. I mean Richard III with audience participation.

On my list to get some more insight into this book is to read Jane Eyre.

On a side note, the author - Jasper Fforde, is a geek. On his site there a Book Upgrade Center. If you go there, it will give you a guide to correcting the errata in your book and printing out a book plate that will show you have updated your book to version 1.2 (or something like that). He even has a BOSS COMING link, just in case you are busted looking at “non work related materials”