fantasy

Jasper Fforde has a rich imagination that moves in wacky directions, an off-the-wall sense of humor that never quits, and a deep knowledge and love of literature which give shape and substance to this hilarious "thing" he's created. Not really a mystery, sci-fi thriller, satire, or fluffy fantasy, this wild rumpus contains elements of all these but feels like a completely new genre. Fforde combines "real" people from the "historically challenged" world of his plot with characters from classic novels, adding dollops of word play, irony, literary humor, satire--and even a dodo bird--just for spice.

With "real" characters who can stop time or travel back and forth in it, hear their own names (the names here are really terrific!) from 1000 yards away, appear in duplicate before themselves to give advice, travel inside books, and change the outcome of history, the reader journeys through Fforde's looking glass into a different and far more literary universe than the one we know. Thursday Next, a SpecOp-27 in the Literary Detective Division of Special Operations, is looking for Acheron Hades, who has stolen the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit and killed one of the characters in it, thereby changing the story forever. Thursday and the Literatecs are trying to prevent him from getting inside Jane Eyre and committing further murders.

If you have not read Jane Eyre recently, your pleasure in this book will be greatly enhanced if you look up a brief plot summary on-line before proceeding too far--the ending of Jane Eyre as we know it is different from the ending of Jane Eyre as Thursday Next knows it, and the differences themselves become a delightful part of this plot. Though some readers seem to feel that the book would benefit from a bit of pruning in order to strengthen its conclusion, that suggestion seems to me to be too much like Acheron Hades changing Martin Chuzzlewit or Jane Eyre--if you do that, something is irreparably lost--and this book is so much fun that I'd hate to lose even a single word!

Imagine, if you will, a world in which literature receives the attention and following that spectator sports receives in our world today. Basically, the "pop culture" of our world is focused on classic literature in Fforde's world. Baconians and Marlovians get into fights about who actually wrote Shakespeare's plays, and vast numbers of John Milton imitators hold conventions. Intellectual property is taken so seriously that a division of the Special Operatives (SpecOps) is set aside just to sort out issues of whether or not original manuscripts are the real thing. These are the Literary Detectives, or the LiteraTecs, and the main character of the book is one of them.

"The Eyre Affair" is told from the perspective of Thursday Next, agent of SpecOps-27, working in London as the book begins. Thursday is a veteran of the Crimean War (which has gone on for over 100 years in this world, and continues still), and her father is an agent of the ChronoGuard. He tries to maintain consistency in the time-stream, and is usually successful.

Early on in "The Eyre Affair," the original manuscript of Dickens' "Martin Chuzzlewit" is stolen, and we discover that a device has been invented which allows a person to actually enter the world of a book and experience it directly. These two plot points, at first unrelated, we soon come to learn have everything to do with one another.

The villain of the book, a memorable character named Acheron Hades, has stolen the Chuzzlewit manuscript in order to wreak havoc on the story by altering it. Hades is perfectly evil, almost indestructible, and one of the most fun villains I've read in some time. He's perfectly happy to make mischief just for its own sake.

The story works well overall, but what really made me want to read it were the details Fforde added to this word he created. Public Will-Speak kiosks which will perform quotes from Shakespeare when you put a coin in. A riot caused by Surrealists. And perhaps my favorite part of the whole book, a performance of "Richard III" performed by members of the audience, with full participation (and heckling) akin to what one finds with "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" in our world. This scene alone made the whole book worth reading for me. Literary references abound in "The Eyre Affair," pretty much ensuring it as a fun read for any well-read individual.

Unfortunately, in parts Fforde tries a little too hard to be clever. For example, the naming of his characters got a bit annoying after a while, as it seemed that every character had to have a clever-sounding name. The main characters, Thursday Next and Acheron Hades, are prime examples, but far from the only ones. Secondary and tertiary characters with names like Braxton Hicks, Victor Analogy, and a vampire hunter named (you guessed it) Spike are only a few more. After a while, the "clever" character names became a bit much. Also, Fforde was more than willing to sacrifice a consistent story for his clever literary plays, as things which couldn't happen in a previous chapter suddenly did later, just to make some other clever jab at Dickens or Shakespeare. It was fun, but it didn't always make sense, even within the "rules" of its own world.

There was an almost self-reflexive quality to "The Eyre Affair," as the book got near the end, as the reality of the story exists on several levels. At one point, there is a character trapped inside a Wordsworth poem, the manuscript of which is inside the world of "Jane Eyre," which is inside the story of "The Eyre Affair" itself. It almost makes the reader step back out of the novel for a moment and consider what they are reading and how they are interacting with it. Somoza's novel "The Athenian Murders" is the only book I've read to successfully pull off this sort of reader involvement, but "The Eyre Affair" does come close to it at a couple points in the story.

I actually enjoyed "The Eyre Affair" quite a bit, despite its minor annoyances. In taking us into the world of "Jane Eyre" near the ending, it made me want to re-read the Bronte novel as we experienced characters in the context of their own world. Fforde's novel is clever and imaginative, even if it doesn't always make perfect sense. It's a book written with an old book-geek like me in mind.

As a fan of Jane Eyre, I was looking forward to this book. I found the concept very interesting and delightful. I would love to live in a world where literature held such value.

However, the book was a bit too long. I think he took a while getting to the thick of the story. I don't think there was enough character development, and the villainous characters were almost too hokey to be taken too seriously.

But I was SO UPSET over Fforde's treatment of Jane Eyre. Are we Bronte lovers really supposed to grasp his notion that Charlotte Bronte herself would not have written the ending of Jane Eyre as she had and that a rather unsatisfying ending was her initial intention? Are we really supposed to be satisfied with the turn of the events for Jane and Rochester being brought about the way he described? I didn't find it amusing at all. I found the ending painful to read! It pretty much ruined the rest of the book for me, even though there was much about it that I initially liked. It's like eating a new, delightful dessert, only to get an aftertaste of rotten eggs at the end. If you LOVE Jane Eyre, I would prepare myself before reading this book.