Jasper Fforde‘s The Eyre Affair is one of the most fun reads I’ve read so far. I only wish I heard about it sooner. The Eyre Affair is definitely a genre-bender in the spirit of Jonathan Lethem‘s Gun, With Occasional Music. Both are detective novels in strange worlds. Lethem’s private eye novel takes place in an odd Orwell/Huxley hybrid of a dystopia, regulated memory and genetic engineering gone haywire, definitely very post-modern. Fforde’s story definitely takes things further with Thursday Next, a literary police detective whose job it is to pay attention to literature in a world where the lines between fiction and reality have been blurred, nearly to the point of erasure. In an alternate 20th century, literature fanatics abound to the point of followers of Francis Bacon fighting over the true authorship of William Shakespeare‘s works, criminals counterfeiting major works, and a supernatural villain who wishes to alter the literary canon as a form of terrorism. And it’s Thursday’s job to stop him, even if it kills her to do so.
There is plenty for a English major or literature lover to appreciate with numerous references to English literature. It’s also a metafictional adventure done quite well, as a few of the characters literally get into texts. This activity has the power to ruin a text or improve it, as a version of Jane Eyre with a dud ending is threatened. If one’s never read Charlotte Brontë‘s famous work, there’s enough info to cue them in, alternate ending and real ending both. That said, The Eyre Affair is downright weird and crazy to keep the reader’s attention, but also engaging. Not for the faint of heart, especially those who can’t handle the fantastic in fiction.
