So without further ado, here is Part One:
Thursday Next.
Anyone who has spoken to me for more than five minutes about books (or anything, for that matter) knows I am a huge fan of Jasper Fforde. I hate to use the word "obsessed" because of the negative connotation (naming my new Ford Focus "Jasper the Ford" does not constitute an obsession), but, yeah, I'm obsessed with his work. However, before you judge me, I dare you to read his books and not get drawn in to his totally unique, clever, funny, creative world. Jasper Fforde brings us something completely new in his writings and he does it with characters we all know and amazing new characters he creates.
There was a period of time in my teens when I read, non-stop, five to seven books at a time and it was at some point in those years that Jane Eyre was swept up in my cyclone of reading activity. I don't remember when I first read it but I know I've loved it for years. I have seen every movie version and even the Broadway musical.
Yes, there was a short-lived Broadway musical based on the novel, Jane Eyre, and it was amazing. It was more faithful to the book than any movie version I've ever seen. A coworker of mine is a big fan of Broadway shows and he and I bonded over this particular show, the big difference between us being that he isn't a reader and still has not read the book.I remember, very clearly, the day he came up to the control room with a photocopied piece of paper. He had found a blurb in Entertainment Weekly about a book called The Eyre Affair and thought I would be interested.
My interest was piqued. On one hand, it sounded like something new and different and it paid homage to one of my favorite novels. On the other hand, you don't mess with Jane Eyre. Like I said, I've seen every movie version and I could tell you what was right and what was wrong with each one. You just don't screw around with such incredible, beloved characters.
But I had to give it a shot.
How do you explain The Eyre Affair? I've gotten at least six people to read this book based solely on my enthusiasm for it because there is no simple way to describe the plot, the characters, or the series that follows.
The Eyre Affair is the first in a series starring Thursday Next. It takes place in an alternate 1985 where the Crimean War is still going on after a century and people take their love of literature VERY seriously. Thursday is a Literary Detective (aka LiteraTec), a bureaucratic officer who polices the very literate world in which she lives. When she was a young child, Thursday visited the museum dedicated to the Brontes and, while reading a page of the original manuscript of Jane Eyre, she found herself transported into the actual story. This was where she first met Edward Rochester.
When The Eyre Affair begins, Thursday is living in London investigating the theft of the original manuscript of Charles Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit. She is one of few people who can identify the suspect, Acheron Hades, an evil genius. Thursday comes close to capturing him, but is shot, her life saved when the bullet is stopped by a copy of Jane Eyre she has on her. While in the hospital, Thursday is saved when her future self visits her and tells her she needs to go home to Swindon and take on a LiteraTec job.
Swindon is where her mother, Wednesday, lives as well as her Uncle Mycroft and Aunt Polly, her brother Joffy, and her former fiance, Landen Parke-Laine. Where is Thursday's father? It's not a question of where so much as a question of when. Her father, Colonel Next, is a former ChronoGuard agent who had gone rogue and keeps a step ahead of his pursuers by jumping through time.
Mycroft is an inventor, some useful items, some not so much. His wife, Polly, is his biggest supporter and his assistant. When Thursday returns home, he shows her his newest invention, The Prose Portal, which allows people to enter books.
Hades kidnaps Mycroft and Polly and holds them hostage in order to blackmail the literary world with the Prose Portal. When used on an original manuscript, the Prose Portal can wreck havoc on a book. Hades uses the Portal to have one of his henchmen enter Martin Chuzzlewit and kidnap and kill a minor character. At first no one notices, the character of Mr. Quaverly was barely mentioned. When his loss is brought to Thursday's attention, the reality of what can happen when the Portal is in the wrong hands becomes very apparent.
Teaming up with Jack Schitt, an operative with the Goliath Corporation, Thursday tracks Hades to Wales after he steals the original manuscript for Jane Eyre. Thursday has to follow Hades into the book, where he has gone to kidnap Jane. With the help of Edward Rochester, Thursday hunts down Hades.
I don't want to tell you what happens next because I want you to read this book. I could write page after page about what happens and still barely touch on the story and the characters. The relationship between Thursday and Landen Parke-Laine, what happened to them, how they met while serving in the Crimean War. Her brother, Anton, who died in the war. Her father, who appears several times in the book to speak with his daughter.
I didn't even get to mention the Will-Speak machines that deliver monologues from Shakespeare via coin operated machines set up on the street, the door-to-door Baconians who try and convert people into believing it was Francis Bacon and not William Shakespeare who wrote all the Bard's work, the audience participation performances of Richard III, or Spike, the SpecOps officer in charge of vampires and werewolves. And then there's the return of the dodo (the pet of choice) and Neanderthals (the cheap labor of choice).
All of that is in one book, The Eyre Affair.
Which is then followed by Lost In A Good Book,
The Well of Lost Plots,
Something Rotten,
and First Among Sequels.
These books follow Thursday as she tries to have her husband brought back to life after his existence is erased and her work in Jurisfiction (the policing agency within literature). She begins with an apprenticeship with Miss Havisham (yes, the one from Great Expectations) to learn the ways of the book world and how to read herself into, or out of, any book or situation.
We learn how characters spend their time when they're not in a scene being read or how characters are created from generics. The Cheshire Cat is the librarian of the The Great Library, which holds every book ever written, both finished and unfinished, which includes the Well of Lost Plots, a place which holds unfinished and unpublished works. It is there where Thursday hides from various people while awaiting the birth of her child from a husband who, at the moment, doesn't exist.
Fforde's books are filled to overflowing with incredible stories, sub plots, and twists. The wordplay is everywhere, in the names of characters and what they do, to the point where you find yourself looking for hidden meaning where there is none. His characters are realistic, flawed, and believable. Thursday is independent without being over the top, she's smart but not a know-it-all, she's strong and intelligent, but flawed and relatable. She is someone you'd like to know and talk books with.
You're never quite sure what is going to happen next and you can't put any of these books down until you know. They're all written with a clever humor that never fails to disappoint. One of my favorite moments in the books is while Thursday is living in the book world, it is discovered there is a shortage of the letter "u". To make up for this, it is decided that certain words will drop the vowel, ie: "neighbour" becomes "neighbor", and this is explained away as a "local spelling idiosyncrasy". I am also a fan of the "footnoterphone", the way people communicate in books through footnotes.
Reading the Thursday Next books will take everything you've ever known, or thought you've known, about books and the world of literature and turn it on it's head. All the while, you'll be cheering for this intelligent, independent lead character.
One thing that has stuck out to me is the absolute villany of the bad guys Fforde creates. They are some of the most creative villians you can imagine. In The First Among Sequels, when I read what Aornis Hades did, I actually gasped out loud. I've read a lot of books in my time, but this had to have been the most evil, vile thing someone can do to a person.
As for Mr. Fforde himself, I've had the honor of meeting him twice.
When you really admire someone for their talent, it can change how you feel when you meet them. After meeting Jasper Fforde, my admiration of him only grew. I've gone to two book signings where he gave a talk before the signing. He is as clever and witty as his books, but even better than that, is the fact that he is an incredibly nice guy. He patiently answered every question a person asked while signing, he posed for the above picture while his partner played with my camera (for some reason she really liked my 35mm Canon Rebel SLR). It's really a wonderful feeling to learn someone you admire so much is really a good person.
I feel like I can go on for days, just about the Thursday Next books, but I need to move on. There is just too much to cover in one blog posting. I would have to create a blog solely dedicated to the Thursday Next books to even begin to touch on all they include. So, I'll tell you what I tell everyone about these books:
"Just trust me, read them, you won't regret it."
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