Book : The Eyre Affair
Author : Jasper Fforde
Genre : Fantasy/Sci-fi

Rating : 3.85/5

Oooh, here’s a mystery for, by and of book-lovers. Yes, really ! It is set in the future where book are priceless so much so that there are special agents devoted to literary crimes. Not quite the crème-de-la-crème of the police force, the SpecOps-27 are on the fringes, mostly have desk-jobs, and are regarded rather disdainfully by the powers that be.

Yeah, that’s where our ever resourceful heroine comes in. She’s the oddly named Thursday Next, a gun-toting, action-loving, impetuous SpecOps-27 operative. Also daughter of one of the ChronoGuard (these folks can flit through time), and niece of the eccentric inventor of the Prose Portal. Thursday must battle Acheron Hades, who’s pure evil, and does wrong for the sheer pleasure of it. When Hades makes off with the Dickensian “Martin Chuzzlewit” manuscript, and aims to tamper with Charlotte Bronte’s much loved “Jane Eyre”, Thursday must follow him across and into pages of fiction, in an attempt to stop the unspeakable from happening.

Wow, this is a different kettle of fish ! You can tell, can’t you ? Because it is safely set in the future, where God knows what can happen, the author is free to create his own alternate reality. And does. The world which Thursday inhabits is a curious mix of everydayness, and the surreal. Time stops when Dad swings by, time rents open up on highways and swallow people up willy-nilly, bookish characters get a life of their own, and cloned dodos abound as pets prized by their versions.

Often in the sci-fi and fantasy genre, authors imagine completely alien worlds, with other-worldly lingo and unknown customs, and yet the words are so deftly woven together and the descriptions so detailed and real, that the book-lovers that we are, we lap it up like so much ambrosia (it’s good for your soul AND lowers cholesterol). Fforde imagines such a reality, and although it’s not wholly unfamiliar, the jargon doesn’t quite settle on my skin, and if you asked me now what a LiteraTec is, my answer would be a hazy smoosh of words. I’m still lapping it up, nevertheless, and glossing over the really out-there bits. Such is the book.

I read “The Eyre affair” over a couple of days, and kept looking forward to picking it up every night. Thursday is a likeable character, and Fforde draws her well. There’s lots of plot, and the author hints at unfamiliar stuff, which is not quite explained well enough to sink your teeth in. It’s a ride into the unknown, and I’m willing to be led along. I’m also a believer, for as long as the words go on. But I would have wished for a little more substance, to bolster up this alternate reality. The romantic bits are a little iffy; this is not a romance novel – there’s too much else going on in Thursday’s life. Which sort of sums the novel – there’s always a lot of stuff going on. And by the time you wrap your mind around that, the novel has moved forward to yet more stuff. Thursday is quite the girl of action.

This is the kind of book where I tag the author as imaginative. And mean it like a compliment. An interesting read this one; I’m glad to have picked it up. Recommended.