Aug 11 2009
‘The Eyre Affair’ by Jasper Fforde
Another book down! I am now officially either a Terminator or a Cylon, though I never saw a Terminator relaxing with a good book so we’ll go with Cylon for now. (For context, see this comment.)
The latest book was The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. (Is that just like Ford? Or is it supposed to be pronounced Effin’ Ford?) It’s a light-hearted comedy detective novel, with little shots of science fiction and surreal horror. Robert Rankin meets Lewis Carroll and Douglas Adams.
I read Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho a few years ago. (I definitely recommend it but it’s categorically not for the squeamish or faint-of-heart.) Many chapters are devoted to the main character’s analysis of Whitney Houston and Huey Lewis albums. These chapters meant nothing to me, though I understand from further reading that they were almost entirely fictional. Whole chapters devoted to demonstrating the narrator’s unreliable nature were completely lost on me.
Reading The Eyre Affair was similarly awkward. The central character is a literary detective, in the sense that she solves crimes to do with books, as well as being a detective in a book. There is a lot of detail about books in the alternate world of The Eyre Affair, but I’ve never read any of the books! What a doofus I am! You’ll get a lot more out of this book if you’ve read Jane Eyre and maybe Martin Chuzzlewit before. Alas I have not.
But this is not a criticism, except of me being ill-read. I enjoyed the book a lot. It was alternately subtle and slapstick. If you like witty wordplay and easy heroics this is your book. If you enjoy characters with silly names doing outlandish jobs, this is your book. If you love villains who revel in their own lack of morals, and know just when to employ a mad cackle, this is your book. If you enjoy time travel in fast cars and characters from novels coming to life, this is your book. And if you like dodos, how would you like one as a pet?
8 Responses to “‘The Eyre Affair’ by Jasper Fforde”
well I read Jane Eyre about, er……,40 years ago so I remember zilch. I remember only very slightly more of a television adaptation which I saw maybe 44 years ago. Well, it had a scary mad woman who got burned to death in a house fire. Children’s tele, great stuff!
Go on PASS it on, please
[…] start something which has been recommended by more people, Jane Eyre. This will also help me to put another recent book into its proper […]
and then of course there is the Wide Sargasso Sea, as recently read by Lizzie at her book group… now I stll havent understood how to make a word into a link, so here it is! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Sargasso_Sea
the reason i haven’t replied yet is i’m not sure how to type html code into a comment and it be visible! however, I think if you remove the spaces then it works
< a href=”www.etc” > then your word then < / a >
you DO want a space between the a (for anchor, i think) and href (for hypertext reference) but all the other spaces you want to remove. and the inverted commas are crucial, i always forget the ones at the end. the / shows that you are ending your link/anchor.
hope that makes sense.
Dougal had got back to me, but my understanding of HTML is zilch. Even your post (above) in email form left me slightly breathless… perhaps I should email it back to you!
this is a tryout < a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Sargasso_Sea” > here < / a >here this might work!
there again, no!
here
ah yes…. the spaces!