The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
I reread Fforde’s Eyre Affair because of my recent re-read of Jane Eyre, and because I hope to venture further in the Thursday Next series, which many friends have recommended to me. EA is great fun–a thumping good read. It contains some clumsy writing, but this hardly intruded on the breakneck pace of the story.
Thursday Next is a literary detective in a fictional England that so loves literature that citizens routinely change their names to that of their favorite poet; there are about four thousand John Miltons in London alone.
Claire Tomalin’s recent Guardian piece on her Milton collection of poems was linked to this week from Arts & Letters Daily. It gave me some timely insight into why Milton was Fforde’s fictive first choice.
After the theft of Dickens’ original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit, Thursday pursues a villain named Acheron Hades. He’s nearly invincible though, as he can read minds, is bulletproof and doesn’t appear on camera. There is a wild chase (but not a wild good chase; see below for why not), guns, vampires, evil corporate goons, an unending war, time travel, and many wonderful scenes with Mr. Rochester.
For other books I’ve read this year and last year, plus music and movies, visit my shelves at Gurulib.
From Dictionary.com, because the relevant passage in EA eludes me:
wild goose chase
1592, first attested in “Romeo and Juliet,” where it evidently is a fig. use of an earlier (but unrecorded) literal sense in ref. to a kind of follow-the-leader steeplechase.
March 8th, 2008 at 11:21 am
Thanks for your comment on my Eat, Pray, Love review. I’m a Fforde fan too! So far I’ve only ventured into his Thursday Next series (and I still have a couple of those to catch up on) but I really enjoy it and hope to get into the Nursery Crimes series as well. His stuff is so chock full of literary references that I can’t imagine anyone accurately identifying all of them, but it sure is fun to try!
March 8th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
I really am enjoying this book series. I started on The Well of Lost Plots today. I’m interested to see how things turn out for Thursday Next.
March 8th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
I’ve heard both series are excellent. One good thing about procrastinating on a series is that it’s well under way by the time I get to it!
March 8th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Either I’m slow or it was a bad day. I started reading this book about a year ago, read a couple of chapters, and realized that I just didn’t get it. I literally didn’t understand what was happening. I didn’t finish the book. Maybe I’ll try again someday since you and Mindy both enjoyed it so much.
March 9th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
I know you’re not slow, so it must’ve been a bad day! It has some clumsy prose, plus some severe mood shifts because of some very dark stuff, but I loved the affection and playfulness with which Jane Eyre is treated. Once it got there, I was smitten.