In a parallel universe, Literary Detective Thursday Next protects the integrity of civilization’s most treasured works of literature as part of British government agency SO-27. Thursday deals with the usual chaotic and untraceable cases assigned to a poorly-run, under-resourced government department—manuscript theft, black market book trades, and the like—until megavillain Acheron Hades enters the scene. Thursday finds herself going head-to-head with a dangerous thief and murderer who has taken an interest in kidnapping characters from the pages of classic novels. Will Thursday be able to rescue Acheron’s latest conquest—the darling Jane Eyre—and return her to the book where she belongs before it’s too late?
I was introduced to Jasper Fforde’s brilliant imagination when I read The Big Over Easy, the first book in his “Nursery Crime” series (read my review here!) Fforde routinely situates quirky detectives within “alternate realities” and asks them to accomplish things that are seemingly impossible—solving the murder of Humpty Dumpty or retrieving a wayward literary character who has wandered out of the pages of a book, for instance. I opine that the parallel England in which Fforde’s characters romp and roam is what you would get if an author like Shakespeare or Beckett made a surrealist painting; the boundaries between readers, writers, and works of fiction are blurred. In The Eyre Affair, it’s possible for one to enter a novel and interact with its protagonists. I found the permeable boundary between people and pages to be quite exciting.
Other aspects of the world in which The Eyre Affair is set are less lighthearted. England is a dystopian police state that has been embroiled in a decades-long conflict with Russia over the Crimean Peninsula, with Thursday harboring terrible memories from her deployment to the war. The Goliath Corporation, a massive weapons manufacturer, dominates the government and has “a finger in every pie” when it comes to England’s domestic and international affairs. Goliath aims to take possession of the “Prose Portal,” an invention by Thursdays’ uncle that lets people enter novels, so it can retrieve, sell, and deploy weapons from fictional worlds in the Crimean conflict. Goliath rivals Acheron Hades in the fear it creates and the power it holds; Fforde doesn’t shy away from exploring evil in both individuals and institutions.
Perhaps Fforde is commenting on the poisonous nature of uninhibited technological advances, as it is quite telling that a machine developed with the benevolent intention of bringing the written word and real world closer together could be used for such nefarious purposes. Still, Fforde maintains the lighthearted touches and brilliant wordplay that he is known for—the head of the Goliath Corporation, Jack Schitt, ends up being a comedic figure who is more of a persistent bother to Thursday and her contemporaries than an actual threat.
In addition to finding the book’s setting be delightful and complex, I cherished the time I spent getting to know Thursday. She carries a great deal of emotional baggage, including war trauma and indecisiveness about whether or not she should get back together with a former love interest. Still, she bears this baggage with a wry sense of humor and exceptional self-awareness that left me poised to support her on every step in her journey to defeat Archeron Hades.
While there was much to cherish and enjoy in The Eyre Affair, I often lost the thread of the main plot because Fforde piled on so many subplots. For example, what exactly is going on with Thursday’s father, a member of the secretive “ChronoGuard” who can stop time at will? I never fully understood the role he played in Thursday’s upbringing because Fforde did not have enough page space to introduce him to readers in more depth. Additionally, I felt that Acheron Hades fell a bit flat as a villain because probing further into his rise to infamy was simply not feasible. Lastly, it took far too long to introduce and resolve the main conflict in the book, which was Jane Eyre’s kidnapping. The price of developing such a wildly unique setting is that it can get too unwieldy, overshadowing the main narrative.
Despite the mild confusion I experienced while reading certain parts of The Eyre Affair, I still consider Fforde’s writing to be a delightful adventure. His dazzling characters and his ability to portray England through a different lens left me wanting to progress to the next book in the “Thursday Next” series.
