Books - The Eyre Affair

by Jasper Fforde

One of the things I've really enjoyed about my travels in the last 7 months is that I have finally had a lot of time to read. Some books that might be classified as literary and others that are trashy (in some people's opinion, anyway - sometimes there really is nothing better than a good read!). I love reading, but in my hectic life in Melbourne, I never seemed to have time or brain-energy to read as much as I would like - even though I always felt a bit more sane when I had a book that I was enjoying. Like many people, there was always a big pile of books on the bedside table waiting to be read.

Well, now I have time to read them! I also want to write about them on my blog to help me remember what I've read and how I felt about them. And if anyone else reads about them and decides to read them too, then that is a fringe benefit (for the author and publisher more than me! Maybe I should ask for commission! haha)

Some of the books I have read in the last few months are (in no particular order):

Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts
Running With Scissors - Augusten Burroughs
Sellevision - Augusten Burroughs
The Brooklyn Follies - Paul Auster
Perfume - Patrick Susskind
The Human Stain - Philip Roth
The Plot Against America - Philip Roth
Abarat - Clive Barker
Coldheart Canyon - Clive Barker
The Devil Wears Prada - Lauren Weisberger
Not The End Of The World - Christopher Brookmyre
The Secret History - Donna Tartt

There were more, but I can't remember them right now - exactly the reason why I want to start blogging about the books I read. And don't worry, I'm not going to go through and retrospectively write about all of them. Amazing, though, that I have read more books in the last 6 months than I think I've managed in the previous 5 years! I'm really enjoying feeling well read again.

I do need to say, though, that Shantaram, Perfume, The Human Stain, The Plot Against America and The Secret History are among the best books I have ever read.

So, I've just finished The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. It is a detective story of sorts with a good dose of fantasy thrown in based around the character Thursday Next, a SpecOps investigator with the LiteraTec division. I picked it up in the library at the hotel that I'm working in and decided to read it because the Australian girl I met on the train between Munich and Innsbruck was reading it. We hadn't discussed the novel at all - it was just an association, so I really had no idea of what to expect.

It really is a very amusing novel. Most of the laughs come from the fantasy elements of the book. It is set in 1986 (ish). Wales is a communist state in the novel. Dodos have been re-engineered out of extinction. Literarature is highly esteemed in Thursday's England - there are vending machines on street corners that recite Shakespeare and there are huge social movements determined to prove the real author of Shakespeare's plays (including the radical Marlowians!).

The plot is based around the arch villain (Acheron Hades) working out how to kidnap characters from famous novels and Thursday's attempts to stop him. He completely removes a minor character from Dicken's Martin Chuzzlewit and moves on to plans to kidnap Jane Eyre. Once removed from the novel, the works are rewritten so there is no sign of them at all from the point they are kidnapped. Particularly disastrous in the case of Jane Eyre. It is a very clever plot with lots of amusing literary references and a wonderfully novel way (haha!) of combining fantasy with reality. The way the author twists facts about literature to have them resolved in his plot is one of the joys of his writing.

Overall, it was an enjoyable quick read with some great ideas. The plot moves quickly and the characters are very well drawn. It is not life changing literature but I would definitely read another Thursday Next book happily! Recommended!