THE EYRE AFFAIR by Jasper Fforde

THE EYRE AFFAIR

by

Jasper Fforde

            Despite top of the line security, Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit manuscript has been stolen. Thursday Next is called to the scene. Next works for SpecOps – the Special Operations Network; specifically, she is an SO 27, one of the Literary Detectives. And, she believes that the thief is the supposedly dead Acheron Hades.

            In The Eyre Affair, we get to know Thursday Next. We also meet her Dad, who used to be a Colonel in the ChronoGuard, before he went rogue, and who can stop time, as well as her aunt and uncle, Mycroft and Polly Next. As a child, Thursday was read into Jane Eyre and met Rochester. It is an interesting family.

But now, as Thursday is on the trail of the stolen manuscript, the thief uses one of Mycroft’s latest inventions, the Prose Portal, to abduct Mr. Quaverley from the original Martin Chuzzlewit manuscript; once Quaverley was killed, the character disappeared from all versions of the book. He then attempts to hijack Jane Eyre in a similar manner. Can Thursday find the thief and save the book before the story is changed forever?

            The blurring of the line between “real” life and the reality within a book is always a draw for a bibliophile – think of the wonderfully done, fantastical Inkheart trilogy by Cornelia Funke. And, although that portion of The Eyre Affair draws in the reader, the parallels to the Ink World end there. Fforde’s book feels like it has too much “weirdness” going on at once. It took me half the book to start figuring out who the characters were and to make some sense out of the confusing plot. Once I was able to sort some of that out, I did enjoy the latter part of the book; but, Fforde did not lead me in and through his world like Funke did with her trilogy. In retrospect, The Eyre Affair appears to be creative and fun; however, it was often a bumpy, confusing experience during the read.