Book Nine of the Book-a-Week QuestThe Eyre Affair
by Jasper Fforde (2001)
Alright...full disclosure here. There was some trepidation before I started reading this book. It was given to me as a gift by my aunt and uncle and when they told me about it, I honestly thought I'd be too dumb to comprehend it. I mean, the cover's got the title in fancy flourishing cursive and it's about Jane Eyre and that's all British and the British are all uppity and serious and serious really wasn't something I wanted to deal with right now and...well, I could go on.
All that worry was for naught, however, as I enjoyed this book quite a bit. The quote from the cover by the Wall Street Journal says that it's an amalgamation of "Monty Python, Harry Potter, Stephen Hawking, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and that's about right on.
The story takes place in an alternate 1985 London where dodo birds have been recreated, vampires and werewolves run through the night, and people can literally travel into books. And that's where heroine Thursday Next comes into play -- she's a LiteraTec operative who keeps a close eye on classic books to make sure that no one messes with the integrity of them. Sure enough, in a very Harry Potter-ish vein, mega-villain Acheron Hades wants some respect and is willing to mess with the classic works of Charles Dickens and Charlotte Brontë to achieve his maniacal goals.
The book's not perfect -- the vampire/werewolf stuff was unnecessary and a huge subplot involving Britain's war with Russia over land played much too big a role -- but it was certainly amusing, humourous (notice the British spelling there), and smart. Apparently this is book one of a series of Thursday Next novels and I eagerly look forward to reading another.
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